The Innocents at School

For the past year, we have supported this and opposed that, and measured out doses of censure and praise. Through all, and taken all in all, we have felt that Harvard College is just a little better than any other college, that the good works of President Pusey and his young bespectacled Dean for the past seven years have been generally commendable. Dr. Pusey was far less a creature of the flaccid fifties than President Eisenhower, of our political capital; one must look abroad to find a match for the scope and imagination of the Program for Harvard College, since the "Great Leap Forward" is its only contender. We have thrown up our fat, white hands and decided that Mr. Bundy is neither a wicked man nor a bad dean.

But those who converge in the future to control the second page of this newspaper may be more radically innocent. It is strongly to be feared that they will be sometimes improperly critical and too often unconstructive, and unknowledgeable and unseeing to the point of distortion.

None but they could seriously envision a future Harvard where herds of dull and nasty little deans and silly pin-headed, tenured boobs will gallop around alternately alabaster and basalt towers; where, while the rest of the faculty has departed for Stanford and Johns Hopkins, a number of University professors will remain to "push back the frontiers of knowledge" and give an annual series of three lectures (open to the public); where 48 undergraduate Houses will be connected by a subway system centered at University Hall Under, beneath the office of the Dean and Traffic Coordinator of Harvard College, who will encourage the purchase of Shady Hill and Amherst to "make it an even 50"; where during half-hour meal periods packaged food-trays and powdered milk will be served by members of the University Employees Union, then numbering half of Massachusett's women over 40; where, in the disturbing absence of a Faculty of Arts and Sciences, students will be taught in their Houses by generally doltish tenth and fifteenth year graduate students; and where each student suite will contain a post-doctoral research fellow as an allegedly living reminder of the prime and vital importance of the Great University to its undergraduate college.

Saying all this may seem very ill-advised, but we do it to steal the Innocent's thunder, so that others will not be misled by him.

Even if he grants the excellence of the University's faculty, the Innocent will still have reservations. He can hold up the so-called Graustein formula of hiring, for instance, as a qualified candidate for the junk-heap, simply because it discourages so many younger teachers of quality from coming here and effectively prohibits giving tenure to other desirable scholars. But his more important reservation about this fine faculty concerns its relationship to the odious undergraduate body. The great scholars have every right to ignore undergraduates (it is sometimes difficult to understand why more of them do not) and squat in a corner of Widener deciphering Ogam Stones. One can only hope, for their sake and the University's, that what most of them produce is "worth" the upkeep of their studies and the amount of departmental stationery they consume. It is still very sad that these dull old men, the scholars, are not attracted in any way to the undergraduates. (It is sad if only because it implies tha undergraduates may just be dull young men.)

There have been enough philanthropists in the world, for many centuries now, to give universities money to support scholars. While this encourages the Innocent, he might think that this good fortune is not as direct a gift to undergraduate education as many like to think it.

The presence of bright Faculty lights gives the lecture system some value, but either the lecture system is not as good as it should be, or it has been thrust too far into the foreground of our educational practices. The Innocent will bless the men who are willing and able to teach in a lower level natural sciences course, or do a good job with an important introductory "survey," but confound the men who drone through the petrified information on their dog-eared three-by-five cards year after year, or recite from their glittering galley-proofs until the Dean has to ask them to desist.

Pointing to the very evident lack of vitality or imagination in the approach to many lecture courses, and to the undeniable apathy that many bright students develop toward their courses, the Innocent has reinforced his indictments. Fortunately, we can grant his point and yet confute him by showing that lecture courses are just supplementary to the studies--usually carried on with younger faculty members--which come under the general classification of tutorial work. If this were true--it is not, but perhaps should be--the Innocent would be ready again to retort: too many instructors and assistant professors neglect tutorial work for the sake of knocking out tomes, because they know quite well the accounting process of the usual ad hoc committee. Worse still, the larger half of the tutorial and sections program has to depend on that unique creature, the teaching fellow.

The Innocent will have to take on faith the assertion that teaching fellows are graduate students paid salaries to teach undergraduates. He will be disturbed that a wide spread of them cannot teach, but try, and that neither they nor the departments are to blame--once the fellowship has been awarded. There are others, too, who do not teach and have no interest in teaching. The departments should beat them mercilessly, or better still, choose people who can teach.

Improving the quality of tutorial instruction--which Dean Bundy has called "unfinished business at all American colleges"--is part of a problem that has a lot to do with the relationship between the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The Innocents, after alleging that too many graduate students are intellectual deadbeats, would probably conclude it is best that undergraduates have as little contact with them as possible. The two groups meet uselessly in most graduate courses, where the graduate student is carefully insulated from shock by such devices as clandestine double grading systems and the unwillingness of most course instructors to tell him he is a jerk and give him a D. But no matter, this is Dean Elder's problem. (We say this every day, and his wilderness cry goes on.)

On native grounds again, House dining halls are the final place for undergraduates to meet their betters. The College knows this, and so makes it easy for great men and little men to eat there. Yet the Innocent finds it farcical: on one hand, the great humanist waddles down to feed his face at a staff dinner once a year; on the other, the famous writer-professor who comes to the dining hall and surmounts all to say "may I join you?" to two students, sits down, and finds himself at an empty table looking at their departing backs.

The Innocent, of course, ought altogether to stay away from House dining halls, and break his bread elsewhere. But it is good to hear his other complaints now, before he assumes the mask of reasoned criticism.

The Innocent is sure to write continuously about problems like those of the Admissions Office. If enough good men turn down Dean Bender's job, it might be tempting for the University to remove this policy slot from the deanery-beanery and feed it in little pieces to sweet-breathed administrators. To avoid this, and insure that the job remain a key policy position, the Innocent might even ask the Dean of Harvard College to give up a job which, qua job, can often be of marginal importance, and a $125,000 home, to step into the Admissions Office, like one of his predecessors did. (What an Innocent!)

No matter in which direction University Hall throws its Honors program, the Innocent is sure to have comments; "Honors for all" does not have to rest on specialization for all. One possibility for the Innocent is Honors in General Education (not, however, the 1960 variety of gen ed). Other possibilities are based on the assumption that writing the thesis and taking a magic number of courses is not the only road for an education at this College. There is no reason why every student should not work, and work hard. But there is also no reason why his work should be circumscribed according to any concept of education in a proto-graduate school pattern.)

Perhaps our most radical Innocence is that we think the College should be a place in which one can get a good part of his education.