A NATURALIZED TUTORIAL

Mr. Darrow's harsh ideas concerning the method of education in American colleges doubtless contain a great deal of shrewd insight. What he recommends is practically a bodily transference of the English tutorial system to Harvard, but he falls to grasp the fact that such a change would be impractical and impossible here. If American preparatory schools measured up to the high standards of Eton and Rugby, then Mr. Darrow would be completely justified in his desire to see the practices of the great English universities speedily imported. But such an event would benefit only a small minority and would sound the death-knell of any hope of cultivating the remainder.

At Harvard there never has been the classical thirst for knowledge so vital to the success of such a system. The American mind is at present not scholarly but business-like. It would be quite impossible to adopt the Oxford system without modification.

That Harvard has so modified it and has done so excellently is evidently unrecognized by Mr. Darrow. The present tutorial system does much to make up for the handicap under which Harvard is placed. American preparation is adapted by it to English educational theories. Oxford goes to the extreme of casting its men adrift in the libraries of England with only a tutor to guide their footsteps. Harvard has borrowed the tutor, but finds it necessary to retain course instruction to meet the needs of the average preparatory and high school graduate. If Mr. Darrow but knows it, Harvard is doing all that can be done in America to -encourage careful and scholarly browsings through the mysteries of Widener.