"Tutoring Schools Business Racket, Threaten Education," Claims Marvin

Tutoring schools are a "great business racket" constituting a threat to sound education, a threat which might be met by instructor's giving general reviews in all courses, Langdon P. Marvin '98, who is now serving his third term as a member of the Board of Overseers, said last night.

At various times since his graduation Marvin has held the presidencies of the Harvard Alumni Association, the Associated Harvard Clubs, the Harvard Club of New York City, and the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

In a statement in which he praised the CRIMSON campaign as an almost unique example of courage, Marvin last night expressed the hope that a "healthy reaction of the student body" might go for toward limiting the schools to their "proper sphere."

Schools a "Racket"

Marvin's statement follows:

"The CRIMSON'S cause is eminently just. The tutoring schools have developed into a great business racket which is a menace to sound education. They have preyed upon students by offering them a third-rate education for so long that the latter have become deluded into regarding them as an integral part of the Harvard system. To get any real result from a college education, both in mental training and in the assimilation of material, a man must do his own thinking.

"The campaign of the CRIMSON with respect to the tutoring schools has, without doubt, the support of the great majority of the alumni who understand the extent to which the schools have grafted themselves onto the educational system of the college. In courage alone this campaign must be almost unique. When has any other newspaper thrown out a large part of the advertising and attacked the ex-advertisers?

Reviews a Solution

"One solution of the tutoring problem may life in the offering of a general review by every instructor in a course at the end of each term. These reviews should be highly beneficial in coordinating the work of the period just completed and would go far towards remov- ing the pre-examination panic and rush to tutoring schools. Reviews are so important in the understanding of any course as a whole that they should be offered by the instructors themselves