History Department Change

Tomorrow the History Department meets to open consideration of the Harvard Policy Committee's History audit. Two of the HPC's major suggestions--strengthening sophomore tutorial and de-emphasizing general examinations--could and should be adopted as soon as possible.

The audit's major criticism of Harvard's history program fell on its ineffectual and unnecessary emphasis on methodology. Most who major in History here choose the field out of "general interest" rather than with an eye to graduate work, the audit points out. And even for those who plan to be professional historians, belaboring the mysterious question "what is history?" in tutorial and on generals is probably not an educationally useful approach.

This line of attack on the History Department is not a new one. In the spring of 1966, 12 junior faculty members proposed major revisions in the tutorial program that would have shifted the program to a sharper focus on substantive historical questions. The tutors wanted to scrap the traditional sophomore tutorial (a survey of great historians from Herodotus on) and substitute a twoyear sequence in the student's particular field of interest. They also suggested that the department offer small conference courses on a carefully delineated historical problem as an alternative to the senior thesis.

Though the junior faculty proposals were shelved, the department has proved to be not nearly so tradition-bound as it then seemed. Actually most of the junior faculty proposals have been enacted. This year the department is for the first time offering Senior conference courses on such topics as "Florence in the Renaissance," and "The Origins of World War I." And sophomore tutorial has been loosened considerably so that tutors can write their own reading list and shape the course around the area they know best. The department now needs to continue the trend it has set with these changes.

Sophomore tutorial should become an ungraded half-course for credit. The department should give students the time to make tutorial the substantial academic experience it now has the potential of being. And grading would only restrict the student's chances to experiment with the field he is beginning and would unnecessarily force tutors to slap precise grade judgments on tutees they often live with in the Houses.

The HPC rightly directed almost all the audit's venom at the department's general examinations--an anachronism that ought to be revised drastically or eliminated. Students are convinced, and many professors agree, that generals are little more than a rehash of final exam questions.

The tedious exercise of generals unfortunately adds up to 30 per cent of a student's Honors grade, and this year the department is compounding its sins by reinstitutnig junior generals, which were wisely eliminated in 1961. Probably many students don't take the tests too seriously. But if junior generals do loom large to concentrators, the sharp focus of junior tutorial would be undermined, and the student's freedom to dabble with General Education would be restricted as he is forced to get ready to meet the requirement.

The idea of demanding some overall knowledge of the field is legitimate enough that generals for Honors seniors should be retained in some revised form, with less emphasis. But non-honors generals should not be continued, and the new junior generals should never be given.