ONE HAPPY FAMILY

Nothing is commoner than to hear the young instructor, currying for favor, deliver a long tirade on the tyrrany of examinations, and the mark system generally. "Gentlemen, they represent a tribute you pay to the great red machine. They are a nuisance to everybody; they serve no educational purpose; they should be abolished." By the time he is an assistant professor our young instructor dismisses them as "a necessary evil," and when he has reached full academic estate, he may even approve of them.

The origins of the present system go far back into history. In the early days all the students came to the University with a single purpose, to get a training for the ministry. As the College grew in wisdom, and breadth and riches, it attracted students for other reasons, social and athletic as well as scholastic. Simultaneously each undergraduate came to represent a financial outlay, a subsidy. The mark system grew up to prevent this subsidy being squandered on the undeserving. Homogeneity of purpose could no longer be assumed in the undergraduate body, but a certain standard of fitness might be demanded. The Harvard mark system certifies that each student is worth his keep. He can either absorb the specified modicum of facts, or he has paid his pittance to the big bad Wolff.

Substitutes are continually being advocated for the Harvard mark system. They range everywhere from the English super-tutorial system and a pass degree, to the honors work and the seminars of Swarthmore. Such schemes would safeguard the subsidy, and yet have some educational value and meaning in themselves. They are neither radical nor impractical; they have been adopted, though not to the point of supplanting the present mark system.

It is not likely they ever will, for they stimulate the creation of small groups with pronounced individualities, and this is anathema at Harvard. This same aversion, in another sphere, caused the radical change in the admissions to the Houses last year. Harvard is not willing to accept the principle, "many are called and few chosen." Outside of History 1 it is not willing to separate the honors students from "the dumb bunnies," the scholars from the social lions and athletes. Thus it will not become an institution for training intellectuals. It insists on catering to the masses; it hopes to convert them; and it will maintain the present mark system as long as it is the only one which permits the traditional homogeneity of the student body to be treated as an actuality.