TUTORIAL EXAMINATIONS.

The first examinations under the new tutorial system in the Department of History, Government and Economics come soon after the recess. There is still too prevalent among undergraduates the false notion that if they pass their sixteen courses with the correct proportion of C's and D's, their degreees will not be denied them. Yet the failure to pass the special examination is as serious as failure to pass the required number of courses.

The trouble seems to lie in the fact that in many instances the tutorial system has been looked upon as an imposition of an additional amount of work, which was not in itself of much importance. In fact it is an attempt to obtain real and not merely technical concentration. The student is required to obtain a thorough grasp of some specific field, and a general idea of the inter-relation of the various fields of history and economics.

The system is yet new and much experimenting remains to be done in the methods of tutoring before the desired ends are attained. At present some tutorial conferences become little more than fortnightly section meetings, with prescribed reading that tends to confuse rather than to systematize the subject matter. What is needed is not more reading but more intensive reading. The difficulty is increased when the students do not enter into the spirit of the plan, whose essence is co-operation between tutor and student.

It may take a few failures to make it evident that the plan is a serious effort to obtain better and more thorough work. Those men, who in choosing their concentration groups, are looking simply for six easy courses, had better choose some other field than Group III.