The Tutoring School Stand

University Hall is in no respect the author of the Crimson's stand against tutoring schools. A blunt denial should dispose of the first misconception which has arisen; that the administration is reading lines from the prompter's box. There has been no pressure applied to the Crimson and there have been no previous agreements. Above all, there has been no suggestion of a subsidy.

In fact, Harvard officials have never in the past evinced any active desire to fight or mitigate the vice which exists in the Square. Their attitude has rather been curiously apathetic, a halting disapproval which has never been vigorous enough to drive them to organized warfare. This apathy has naturally enervated any other groups with vested interests in the problem. Just how the administrative officers have been able to lull themselves into such a pleasant slumber is an interesting question.

There has, however, been one positive reaction to the tutoring racket. Next year, according to assurances from University Hall, there will be a general retreat from certain of Harvard's outstanding liberal practices. There will be reduction of the cuts allowable to each student, more careful records of attendance, pushes on all fronts against the disciplinary freedom which undergraduates enjoy here. The reasons for this lie in the vague belief that tutoring is the result of too much freedom. And on the basis of this vague belief, students are to be rudely stripped of their privileges.

If the University thinks there is a weakness in its system which leads to tutoring, it is quite right. But if it regards liberal study rules as the proper salient to be counter-attacked, it is equally wrong. There has been one reaction predominant in the college--as disclosed in letters to the Crimson and as voiced in discussion roundabout--since the publication of Tuesday's editorial. This is the attitude that, while tutoring schools are indeed vicious and overgrown, there is a reason for their existence. This reason is the worthless teaching and organization in a great number of courses, the unreasonable demands for work in others, the refusal to sympathize with academic maladjustment.

"It is the desperate attempt of the average student to find some order in the chaos which a series of disorganized and pedestrian lectures leaves him" which drives a student to tutoring schools, according to one letter. A father bemoans the fact that a professor refused his Freshman son needed aid, forcing him to a tutoring school. Two Freshmen accuse the University of ignoring the problem which first year men meet in organizing their work and in facing an entirely new system. Others lambaste excessive and dull reading lists.

All these tracks in the sand did not make themselves. Much of the blame can justly be eased onto the feeble and barren instruction which the University frequently offers. Too many professors and instructors are--what is worse than incapable--disinterested in students and unwilling to help solve their problems. Too many courses are simply a chaos of information, disconnected and illogical, which only extraordinary minds can organize. Unusual minds can; others are forced across Massachusetts Avenue.

The problem of adjustment is peculiarly important. It is difficult for Freshmen to meet the machine-like routine of Harvard. They are in need of conscientious guidance and aid in each course, they require individual treatment and consideration in the assignment of work. Instead they are here faced with an inordinately difficult course like History I; often with unfeeling automatons for instructor. Small wonder that the sirens from across the strait lure them.

There are great faults in Harvard's teaching system; if the degenerate type of tutoring is ever to be driven from Harvard, there must be general house cleaning. However, there is a common tendency to make too much of these faults, and they are used to rationalize things for which they are not responsible. The tutoring schools blow them up to huge proportions, using them to explain the most vicious practices. Rich and indolent students give them as an excuse in entirely unwarranted cases. And the fact remains that without the knavery of the Harvard tutoring schools, and without a wealthy, lazy clientele, the tutoring racket would not exist