Gen Ed and Tutorial

Dean Monro's proposal to put non-Honors tutorial under supervision of the General Education Committee is at once a marriage of convenience and a major step in educational policy. The utility of placing the new program under an existing interdepartmental administrative committee was clear to the Masters, but the real opportunity presented should not be obscured by the burdens which will be imposed on the Committee.

The long-standing obstacle to an imaginative non-departmental tutorial program has been the identification of Honors with intelligence. Since Honors, however, continues to have its traditional implication of intensive concentration, intelligence becomes synonymous with heavy concentration. In fact, students in the Social Sciences are only recommended for Honors in General Studies if it is physically impossible for them to complete the Honors program.

In a university college it is virtually impossible to remove this emphasis on specialization in the departmental concentration programs, principally because of the importance of graduate students in undergraduate teaching. Assigning non-Honors tutorial to the General Education Committee is the first step in making someone responsible for non-departmental education, beyond mere distribution, at the upperclass level. It is encouraging that Harvard is again coming to recognize that the non-specialist deserves not only tutorial, but a full-fledged education.