DEMOS WANTS TUTORS WORTHY OF THE NAME

The Harvard tutorial system, which during its few years of existence has become the most widely discussed of University institutions, has once more become the subject of a treatise. "Problems of the Tutor" is the topic upon which Dr. Raphael Demos '16, Instructor in the department of Philosophy, has written an article in the latest number of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. Dr. Demos is himself a tutor and his comments on the advantages and disadvantages of the system are made from an authoritative position.

Writes from Constructive Angle

Partiality to the clever student, over-emphasis on the field of concentration, mechanization of the tutorial conference, and lack of sympathy between the tutor and his advisee, are situations which may arise under the system and which Dr. Demos deplores. His observations, however, are all of a constructively critical nature with the view of correcting the faults of the system while it is still in the formative stage.

Excerpts from Dr. Demos' article follow:

"As soon as an idea is put into application fresh situations arise, unforeseen by those who conceived it. In the course of the last few years the tutorial method has been capturing department after department at Harvard, and during this short interval experience has yielded new data both as to difficulties to be overcome and opportunities to be ex-recited. The tutorial system is in that interesting period of its growth in which it may be said to have conquered initial opposition without yet crystallizing into any final shape. Conscious of security, it may face criticism without suspecting enemies in ambush and profit from the lessons which its own brief but rich life may teach it.

Tutors Apt to Show Preference

"With every new year the tutor is confronted with a miscellaneous assortment of advisees. Impartial to all at first, he finds himself quickly discriminating in favor of those students who show some special competence in their field of concentration; with the others--the average students or worse--he makes a gallant effort and then gives it up. These last have chosen their special subject not because they were interested in it in any particular sense; they had to choose something, poor fellows, and they chose the subject which sounded nice or easy or looked vaguely attractive on the program. To be sure, the tutor continues meeting them at stated intervals, but he is apt to make the duration of the conferences rather short and the interval between them rather long, while, conversely, to the abler students he gives of himself eagerly and without stint. Meanwhile, he soothes his conscience with the reflection that the average student, lacking intellectual individuality as he does, is not entitled to individual attention and must be dealt with in the mass, as one of many in a class room.

"Is the tutorial method, conceived as a means of individual instruction, directed to the able student, to the specialist, in fact--or to the species student in general? . . .

Tutorial Field Should Be Broad

"Presumably, students who are unable to make any technical advance in their subjects or to go any further than its general aspects as expounded in the standard courses will always be with us. And the tutor can be of very great service to such men if he tries to approach them not from the angle of their particular field but on the common ground of general culture. I fail to see why tutorial instruction should be confined within the limits of the field of concentration; after all, the tutor is a teacher of the student as a student and not as a possible specialist. So, if the tutor cannot convert the average student into a specialist, he can nevertheless help him become an educated man. . . .

"The tutor has an unrivalled opportunity to cultivate in the student the habit of reading good books. This is a declining practice these days; the public rears newspapers or magazines or the novels of the day, but more often it does not read at all; it looks at motion pictures, or it listens to the gramophone or the radio, or it occupies its leisure with action, such as driving or camping or dancing. If the college could enter a wedge into the customs of the country by instilling at least in the student the habit of reading good books, it would confer on society a benefit of very great value. At present the outlook in the colleges is far from hopeful. The student reads in his room less and less. As a rule he shares his rooms with one or more friends, and when they and their acquaintances drop in--as they are wont to do--studying becomes out of the question. More and more the student is beginning to utilize his room for bridge, or the victrola, or some sort of a good time; and when he feels the need for study, he repairs to the spacious and comparatively peaceful reading room at Widener. The consequences of this condition of things are deeper than appear on the surface. By transferring all intellectual activity from his living quarters to the college library, the student falls into the practice of limiting his reading to his courses and to the preparation of assigned themes; and casual spontaneous reading correspondingly suffers. Reading as a task takes the place of reading for pleasure. . . .

Should Keep Balance in Relations

"Great as the danger is of constructing the tutorial conference on the pattern of class instruction, there is equal risk of over-emphasizing the difference between the two. You do not overcome the defects of mere efficiency by mere inefficiency. To light a cigarette, stretch one's legs on the desk, and indulge in aimless, endless talk leads to wisdom no more than does the mechanical taking of notes or the frenzied cramming for an examination. We should watch lest the tutorial method degrade the process of learning into a form of intellectual journalism; in practice it should involve serious work and surely as much preparation in the way of reading and thinking on the part of the student as any other of his academic activities. . . .

Discussion by Students important

"The students should actively participate in the work of informal teaching; by voluntary reading, by discussion among themselves, they should create an atmosphere of thoughtfulness and culture permeating all their college activities; then, indeed, learning would become unconscious and natural, like breathing. . . .

"The defects of our educational regime may be summed up in one phrase: arbitrary separation of what should be joined. We separate the library from the living room, the activities from the studies, the teacher from the student; we separate the undergraduate from the graduate, so that the former is apt to be too youthfully irresponsible and the latter too serious and professional: we separate one department of knowledge from another: finally we separate education from life itself, so that when the college course is over we abandon books and serious discussion and lapse into a life of mere business, estranged from the world's intellectual heritage.