HARVARD SCORED

Harvard's House Plan and Tutorial system were subjected to severe criticism in the quiet town of Andover this week by the youthful president of the University of Chicago Robert Maynard Hutchins. "Since President Eliot gave the country the elective system, not one single useable idea has emanated from New England," he said. And added, "Now either New England must regain its former leadership in the American educational field, or it must become an excrescence." Besides displaying a complete lack of understanding of the institutions originated in the administration of President Lowell, the visitor from the West appeared worried about the fact that Harvard's former prestige as one of the country's foremost educational leaders was threatened since many of her institutions were unique or unable to be used elsewhere.

Hutchins criticized the House Plan, saying: "The West can never use the House Plan. It is too expensive, it does not consider co-education, and the problem of men living at home." To condemn the plan as worthless on these grounds is unthinking. Equally superficial is his second criticism which states that the House Plan puts too great emphasis on the social and moral virtues of University education at the expense of intellectual virtues. Unlike the unorganized dormitory or fraternity system prominent in most American universities the Harvard House Plan definitely stresses intellectual rather than social virtues. Being in close adjunct with the Tutorial system the one supports the other. An advocate of large classes for the purpose of instruction, Hutchins scored the Tutorial system as a reflection of the "small class" idea. But though the youthful president is unaware of the fact, the tutors, far from endeavoring to teach or coach students in a small class, are striving to give students a complete mastery of a special field of learning and an opportunity for intellectual expansion and creativeness. Understanding must be the criterion for future higher education and not ability to amass unrelated facts without any continuity of purpose.

President Hutchins, like many American educators, lays too great emphasis upon mass education and general liberal training. Education by its very nature is an individual rather than a mass achievement. The aim in future collegiate education should not be the wholesale education of the masses irregardless of their aptitude, but should be the stimulation and cultivation of men with intellectual vision and originality.