SECOND HAND

Seniors, for all their epithet of "Solemn", are not usually an entirely serious-minded clan; and the proposals for reforming the University that were expressed in last year's questionnaires, are not all of them in deadly earnest. One for example, urged that Radcliffe should be incorporated into the University, so that Harvard might profit by the advantages of co-education as it is known in the West. Yet on the whole the 1922 First Annual Report, which reprints many of these brief reform-bills, is a storehouse of valuable suggestions from en whose ideas were formed on the best possible basis.

Perhaps the most surprising note in these suggestions is the recurrence of one particular complaint the Tutoring Schools. Among a host of miscellaneous ideas, the repeated condemnation of those institutions stands out as one those institutions stands out as one fault on which most of the Senior were agreed. And the objections were not raised merely by onlookers who were jealous at seeing others get better marks with less effort, nor by men who regard these schools as inconsistent with the best college ethics; they seemed in many cases to come from men who had tried and had been disillusioned. Probably these victims had succeeded to getting through with the minimum of effort; but they admitted that they were carrying away little more than a diploma.

Granted that tutoring is in certain cases desirable and necessary; also that authentic professional notes, used with discretion as an outline and not as a source, are often justifiable; still much of the wholesale tutoring about the Square is not honest teaching but mere psychologizing with the definite aim of cheating the examiner; likewise most of the notes that are on public sale are of dubious value in themselves and are most relied on by those who know least how to use them with discretion. Days go quickly, examinations come almost unawares; and it is a temptation to stock up with second hand knowledge and be content with passing. If the warning of the Senior were heeded, there would be fewer regrets in the future and more real learning in the present.