A CODE FOR TUTORS

The educational world is notoriously fertile ground for theories and it is often difficult to know which should be classed with the wheat and which with the tares. Where there is some measure of agreement, it is unfortunate that the general opinion should not be carried into effect. Such a situation, however, is approached in the present condition of the tutorial system.

Nothing new can be urged in discussing the function of the tutor, but so long as generally accepted principles are violated there is a reason for reasserting them. The main criticism of tutorial method has been leveled at "coaching". Obviously enough, the syringe-sponge combination is to be avoided above all things. Tutorial conferences should not be private lectures, in which the student plays a wholly passive role. Massage cannot take the place of exercise in developing the mind any more than it can in developing the body.

Careful direction of cramming is clearly not the tutor's business, and it can safely be left to the Widow. Coaching of a certain kind, however, has a legitimate place. It is most needed where it can most easily be abused, in help to undergraduates writing theses. There is a definite educational value in learning how to organize a thesis and in learning what are the paramount issues of the subject under consideration. A first-rate tutor will provide this background without doing the student's thinking for him.

Rightly, and inevitably, tutors will decide on their own methods of instruction, but they ought always to be guided by the axiomatic principles of the tutorial function. Among these unwritten laws the first would be to avoid being primarily a convenient encyclopedia of useful information. And the second would be like unto it: to give the student some insight into the problems of his field and to inspire him to study them intelligently for himself.