Plus Ca Change

Intentions being important, Professor Gill's proposal for revision of tutorial and Honors merits praise. But in 14 specific proposals, only the change in General Studies and abolition of the Honors-non-Honors dichotomy will make any difference.

Deans and tutors have already said they would expect little change in tutorial enrollment; this is understandable, since nearly everyone who has not neglected his sophomore tutorial work can get junior tutorial anyway, and senior tutorial would still require a thesis.

Offering Honors in General Studies without departmental recommendation is a real improvement, for the wild diversity of present criteria serves mainly to confuse undergraduates and befog the College's conception of the relation between Honors and departments.

Also significant is the CEP's reaffirmation of its 1958 Honors-for-all proposals in their belief that every student can benefit from the tutorial relationship which nominally is the heart of Harvard education.

But neither of these will affect the real problem of students who are peripheral to the present structure of Honors. Who are already offered a chance for tutorial, but have no chance for tutorial designed for students uninterested in departmental scholarship.

And no immediate expedient will do much for the declining quality of junior tutorial, which has increasingly become a sectioned course or collection of groups too large for any tutorial relationship. Indeed, if the proposed changes attracted more students to tutorial, quality of the program might decline.

Finally, addition of tutecs not really interested in the present structure is likely to serve only to convince already skeptical departments that these students cannot profit from tutorial instruction. A more realistic explanation is that they are simply unprepared to get much from tutorial cast in the present mold, and this the administrators should know already.

Tutorial is valuable because it is individual instruction adapted to unique needs and interests, not because it helps concentration or because it helps produce better scholars. The College cannot resolve the weaknesses of present tutorial simply by ordering the department to make the existing opportunities more available.

Widening of Honors in General Studies is long-needed, and abolition of the verbal Honors-non-Honors distinction is a real improvement; the present proposal, for all this, is no more than a series of technical adjustments to make the 1958 principle more applicable, and it does not challenge the improbable assumption that individual instruction should be provided only in the context of an Honors program. Gill's proposal is a needed set of changes, but we aren't going to jump for joy.