ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION

As the examination period draws to a close, there arises the usual question of the ethics of tutoring. In certain courses students are given to understand that those who obtain such outside assistance, if it comes to the knowledge of the instructor, will be assured of a low grade regardless of the merits of their papers. Yet these courses are usually just the ones in which an accurate correlation of the entire semester's work is essential in order to pass the examination. The department of Philosophy offers an excellent example of this in the case of Philosophy A.

At the close of the course the instructors make no attempt to review the work, and yet a review, and a good one, is necessary to fulfill the rigid requirements of the examination. As the results are usually graded on a sliding scale by the so-called Harvard curve, and the competition for passing marks is keen, in order to gain such a comprehensive view the ordinary student would be obliged to devote a major portion of his time to so doing. There are many who cannot do this, and many more, taking such courses in order to fulfill a requirement of one kind or another, who do not consider that the effort is worth the reward. For these the only recourse is to tutor before the examination.

Nor is there any valid reason why they should not. There can be little benefit to the man who has not done a reasonable amount of work during the semester, for certainly he cannot learn an entire half-course in four hours. If he can there is something wrong with the course, or with the examination. But for those who have regularly followed daily assignments, tutoring offers a perfectly legitimate way of saving time, scarce enough during the examination period, which may be devoted to subjects of greater interest, or of greater importance in a field of concentration. Those professors who most strenuously object to the trespass of strangers on their particular paths of learning, might do well to resort to a method which has been tried successfully in History 1 among other courses, namely giving review lectures of their own before the examination.