Sections and Stress

Recent discussions have detailed all too well how undergraduate education has failed. For too many, it has become a means to an end. Easy courses provide the means for a good grade. The right course titles will help in recruiting. Classes, and the work that they entail, have lost their value amidst the benefits that prestige may entail.

But there are still those of us who care about our education, the ones who take courses on the basis of personal interest. Many of us understand the opportunities provided here and the value of each class for our personal education.

There’s a problem, though. Most of us are miserable.

We face a relentless grind of midterms and papers. We intentionally place ourselves in a position of sleep deprivation. And we even compete with others about who has the worst workload at any given time.

Our culture has received a lot of needed attention recently, from inadequate mental health services to the inherent competition created by over 6,000 of the most ambitious and gifted students in the country. But the academic environment has failed to enter these discussions.

Both Harvard and Oxford draw similar students, place the same high bars for admission, and impose similar workloads. Logically, students should share similar experiences at both schools. Yet their experiences, on average, are completely different. And it stems from the academic environment.

Sure, Oxford students are stressed during final exams and other important points of their course, but they never endure the same weariness that pervades our campus. And there are never discussions about the Oxford system as a failure.

Oxford courses occur as individualized tutorials. Each week, the professor provides a reading list for a particular topic. The student then reads the sources and writes a paper typically between 2,000 and 3,000 words long. The student then meets the tutor, discusses the paper, and repeats the cycle for every week throughout the term.

The system is impractical, inefficient, and can sometimes feel outdated. But it also emphasizes the deeply individual nature of learning. Students bear the responsibility for every reading and every topic. They have complete control over their education.

And at its core, education remains a fundamentally personal experience. While discussions and evaluations are a necessary part of academic life, learning is a process that occurs internally. Tutorials, for all of their practical disadvantages, provide a nearly ideal means to structure and pursue that experience.

Harvard classes have lost that individual component. Even our smallest courses involve a performative aspect during seminar discussions. No matter our motivation for taking a particular course, whether personal interest or concentration requirement, we all must demonstrate our knowledge in some way to both teaching fellows and peers.

That element of our education comes through most clearly, though, during sections. Participation grades have transformed these discussions from a stage of collaboration into a stage of competition. The vast majority of students speak for the grade and not the material. And that is why we hate section. It has destroyed the purpose of itself.

Furthermore, these aspects of our education occur in the context of a failed academic culture. When many students only care about the grade and many professors do not care about the teaching, those who care about the material are left on their own. The will to learn erodes under the need to compete. Academic inquiry erodes in the face of apathy.

We desire to learn, but in this academic desert, courses lose their intrinsic value. It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the spirit of inquiry against an environment that reduces learning to a means for a good grade or a successful career.

Our culture needs to change. But it will be a slow and arduous process. In the meantime, all we can do is evaluate our intentions and ourselves. The irony of our current culture is that, in a way, it actually enhances the personal nature of education.

Isolated from the other students by our motivations and our professors by our priorities, we are left alone, both with our thoughts and the others who commiserate with us. And it is in these contexts that we truly learn.

This is the last bastion of education at Harvard. It occurs in our readings, not our lectures. It occurs in our conversations, not our sections. It occurs in the late night common room discussions and dining hall debates. But mostly it occurs alone, late at night, as you block out everything around you and silently continue to think.

Raul Quintana ’14, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. He is studying abroad at the University of Oxford this semester. His column appears on alternate Fridays.