KING GRADE

The axe of the headsman has fallen.

The unfortunate probationers are doomed beyond respite. Those who have found favor in the eyes of the gods of University Hall now burn incense and take childish joy in comparing the marks of grace and distinction bestowed upon them. They rush to festivities; exult that the agony of suspense is over; and first realize that upon grades and hope of grades they have fashioned their lives for the last four weeks.

This whole gripping scholastic drama is a farce. It is absurd, ludicrous, ridiculous. There is no place for it in a true school of humanism. As long as the only method of university instruction was that by courses, as system of marks and grading was a necessary administrative evil. But now that the tutorial system has risen; now that it begins to fulfill the promises of its advocates; now that its usefulness and power of future development are every-where recognized, the present system of and emphasis on grades is a galling chain fettering the future to a dead and sterile past.

In his last Report, President Lowell wrote: "There is now intention of gradually substituting tutorial work for courses of instruction.... They must by experience be woven together into one fabric, not inharmonious but each dependent for its best results upon the other." Quite so; but the matter is that there can be no harmonious development as long as the present over-emphasis on grades is maintained. it is an iron band which ruthlessly stunts the growth of the tutorial system. There are not two strong and harmonious systems; there is in fact only one, and that one crushes by its dead weight of ancient routine all attempts of a second to grow to proper strength and utility at its side.

For three and a half years a student's scholastic standing depends solely upon the grades he receives in courses. Honors, probation, expulsion are all adjudged according to course records. Tutorial work is supposedly recognized as necessary for success at divisional examinations; but for the majority of the undergraduates divisionals are a very remote and unthreatening hazard. What is of great and immediate importance is University Hall's record of grades. Tutorial work is therefore naturally the first to suffer when a student finds himself pressed for time, and that is always. The drowning sailor thinks of the wave which threatens to engulf him at the moment, not of one which may do so two, three, or four hours hence.

The tutorial system will be regarded as of very minor importance by the student as long as it is so regarded by the College office! Overemphasis on course grades is fatal to its full development. It has quite astonishingly achieved much in spite of a hostile environment; it can never achieve more if the from chains of an ancient grade system of academic discipline are not removed.