MORE TUTORS!

Professor H. W. Holmes, Dean of the Graduate School of Education, speaking Friday before the Vassar Alumnae of New England, declared: "Collegiate education should be education, not mere instruction." Purporting to escape the limitations of mere instruction, the tutorial system was established at Harvard. It has not been entirely successful. Being exotic, adaptation was necessary from the start, and experience shows that further adaptation is now needed if it is to fulfill its purpose.

One of the greatest evils the educator must face is cramming for examinations. Knowledge amassed by high pressure cramming is short-lived, and of little premanent-value. It was hoped that the tutorial system would eliminate this evil. It seems rather to have changed its form only. The tutor means little in the life of the sophomore and junior. Considering him as a necessary evil, improvident students are glad to excuse the tutor's attentions when he says he must devote most of his time to seniors. But when they in turn become seniors, the tutor takes on a new meaning. With anxiety born of imminent divisional examinations, the senior seeks his tutor and implodes aid. Then begins a period of systematic and supervised cramming which ends only with the end of the divisional examination period.

This evil is not exggerated. It is a real obstacle in the way of a thorough education, in the sense employed by Dean Holmes. If it is to be remedied, more tutors must be added to the departments. At present, so little time can a tutor devote to any one student that he can not know him or his needs. Every system of large-scale education reduces to a bare minimum the contacts between professor and student. It was hoped that the tutor would counteract this disadvantage of a large college. But when forced to share himself among too many students the tutor becomes merely another part of the already too bloodless and inhuman system.

If a tutor is to serve the real end for which he exists, he must have time to know his tutee. Every student presents a different combination of strength and weakness, of likes and dislikes, or special interests, hopes and ambitions.

If a tutor is really to help a student, he must first appraise him. Each student presents to the tutor a new problem. But at present the problem is not being solved. A new tutee is immediately swallowed up in the system, and assigned to do certain standardized reading.

If the system is to be the constructive force it is capable of being, the tutor must begin early in a student's sophomore year applying his skill as a specialist to that man's special needs.