AGAIN THE TUTORS

The tutorial system is a hardy plant, it blossoms even in those occasional weeks of the college year when the pressure of examinations drives tutors into academic retreats as secluded if not as hectic as those into which their tutees retire. One of them has sallied forth to express himself in the current Alumni Bulletin, reviewing the situation as it applies to the English Department.

A better proof of the vitality of the system may be found, however, in the matter in which emphasis has shifted of late from the problem of building a tutorial system to that of keeping one. And even to Mr. Peterkin, the latest commentator, this does not mean that the goal has been achieved, that all that remains to be done is to nurse and fondle any full-fledged academic child. It means rather that in the opinion of the tutors, as in that of the undergraduates and in that of the Faculty, the progress that has been made suffices to prove the desirability of going further. Criticism should rather be whetted than stilled by the growth of the new institution. For if its conception demanded care and thoughtful attention its further development demands the painstaking and critical approach of both tutor and student.

Indeed Mr. Peterkin writes with the salutary advantage of criticism as his major promise. He is concerned primarily with the future of the tutor. "As the system now stands," he says, "tutoring in English presents itself to the tutor as a cul de sac, since it appears to lead nowhere, either at Harvard or else-where." Such a situation is one that menaces the system. For if both remuneration and prospects are slight, the talent attracted will be slight, the services of graduate students will be required, and the principal advantages and merits of the system will be vitiated.

So far it is easy to bear with Mr. Peterkin, for he is but elaborating a problem that has been at the core of the system and its administration ever since their inception. It is in the remedies suggested that difference of opinion will creep in. Mr. Peterkin proposes two, in one of which the tutorial system is to be regarded, as training school for professors, with the better tutors allowed to combine the two kinds of work, with gradual promotion to professorial ranks no their goal.

That such a scheme as this can be advanced at all must be deplorable. The tutorial system at Harvard has always been based on the assumption that it was not a subsidiary department, but a parallel one. It has always been assumed that the tutor was to contribute something to the education of the student which he could not obtain from the work which he did in courses. To establish a graded system of promotion from the ranks of tutors to the rostra of lecture balls would destroy this primary purpose of the system. It would substitute for the better type of tutor, at present to be found in the History, Government and Economics Departments and in lesser numbers among the other departments, men of the calibre of instructors.

The other plan advanced in the article is one by which tutors would be graded among themselves. Prospects and, it is to be presumed, remuneration would be graded similarly. This would solve the problem in so far as it concerns a need for ambition. The tutor could strive to elevate himself in the standing. As far as the actual compensation is concerned, even his suggestion is driven back to the meltable plea for more funds, The Harvard Fund is symptomatic of a desirable change that is indeed taking place in the collection of funds for the University, but how long it will be before it is possible to apply such money to the proper remuneration of teachers on a scale of any magnitude, it is difficult to say.

Both suggestions, however, reveal an attitude toward the function of the tutor that is in many significant points at variance with that which must be held its ideal. Mr. Peterkin attributes to the Crimson the desire that the tutorial relationship should be "something more than a merely educational one". Such a statement as this is in itself innocuous, but when Mr. Peterkin goes on to declare that the tutor "has it in his power to influence not merely the intellectual tastes of his men but their character and their standards of conduct", he is expressing his own opinion. That a tutor should be more than a walking encyclopedia is to be affirmed, but that he is to be a moral influence, that he should be chosen on the basis of personal qualifications, or character, good habits, moral integrity, should be vigorously denied.

Confronted with such a tutorial relationship as Mr. Peterkin suggests, it would be only reasonable for any student to rebel. The difficulty of securing tutors with the necessary intellectual equipment for their task is certainly serious enough without adding to it the qualifications of character, tact, or sympathy with the student's personal problems. The individual problem, similarly, is such that there seems no adequate reason for adding to the tutor's responsibility over his charges.

There has always been in the ideal university education a certain demarcation between intelligence and integrity. A proctor is a proctor and a teacher is a teacher, and confusion of their respective spheres would be nothing short of disastrous. Any suggestion that concerns the question of the tutor's intellectual leadership of the student must be welcomed. That the problem of securing and of keeping men competent to undertake the mental salvation of undergraduates has not as yet been completely solved need hardly be stated. But the problem of finding men who can also undertake moral and spiritual salvation, who can mould character and standard's of ethical along with mental processes and habits of thinking, is one that need hardly concern the supporter of the tutorial system.