Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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of various periods in East and West have expressed this re- action. Courses in General Education are not panaceas for every educational ill, but those offered in the last two years at Harvard represent an approach to the study of the humanities which, to judge from the results, has already proved fruitful. Like all courses they depend for success less on their method than on the men who give them and their ability to arouse sympathetic and intelligent response in students. Much of the material has already been taught in other courses and will continue to beg the hope of the experiment in General Educa- tion is that its new emphasis may give to both instructors and pupils fresh interest and insight. Should General Education be Compulsory? The report which proposed the General Education program and was approved in principle by the Faculty, sug- gested that after an experimental period three of the elementary courses should be required of every undergraduate together with three others chosen either from the General Education list or from a group of other courses in various departments and approved as suitable by the General Education Com- mittee. On this the Student Council's report on student opinion dissented. A majority of the undergraduates who were polled opposed making General Education courses a compulsory part of the Harvard program. There is good reason for the opposition. Compulsory courses at Harvard have almost always been handicapped. Students have tended to resent any course which they have been forced to take or to elect from a very limited group of possibilities, and their re- sentment, as many English A instructors know, has too often shown itself in apathy or worse, so that the task of effective teaching and the conduct of vigorous discussion has been made hard or even impossible. Resentment or apathy on the part of undergraduates would surely block the ends for which the General Education courses have been planned. It may be Bartlett Whiting gives courses on Chaucer and on Old and Middle English. Dean of the Graduate School of Design, joseph Hudnut heads a distinguished group of modern architects including Walter Gropius of Bauhaus fame. that their obvious value will overcome the traditional dislike for compulsory or quasi-compulsory programs, but it is to be hoped that the initial student reaction will be carefully pon- dered and that the Faculty will not impose any requirement until it is certain that it will accomplish more good by doing so than by letting General Education stay on a take-it-or- leave-it basis. If it has the merit it should, it will prove itself and will reach all those capable of profiting by it, if it is even in part forced on the undergraduate, there is at least a chance that the taint of compulsion may jeopardize its success. Tutorial is Weakened Unfortunately the same half-decade which saw the beginnings of General Education as a promising step forward in educational method and a new way of arriving at an under- standing of the full value of the humanities for modern life, saw also the weakening of another educational system which had abundantly demonstrated its ability to serve the same ends for students specializing in humane studies. For years the tutorial plan was a feature of Harvard education, and dubious as its utility may have been in some fields, there is no doubt that it worked admirably in the humanities. The student who read and discussed his reading with a tutor, who found in tutorial a chance to follow lines of inquiry independently of courses, and who learned to understand and think better by testing his ideas against those of an instructor working individually with him, often got immensely more out of his 'l48l

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feeling current among us. Their essential thought was examined as the core of the Western tradition . . . through which we still comprehend man himself, as a social being, and as a partner in belief. In another course the epic and the novel were studied with such texts as the Iliad, the Otlyrrey, the Divine Comedy, Pumclife Loft, and a group of novels ranging from Don Quixote to M aby Dirk and War and Peace. Finally two half-courses dealt with Individual and Social Values in Literature,', first in history and drama and then in fiction and philosophy. The texts were chosen to reflect a variety of attitudes toward the continuing interplay between society and the individual and were studied with reference to the nature of the forms, and the logic and rhetoric underlying them, with the emphasis on concepts of personality, motiva- tion, and ethical responsibility, and the manner of their em- bodiment in literary forms. Success but No Panacea All these courses were repeated in 1947-48 and to them were added three other half-courses, one on Classics of the Christian Tradition an introduction to the Christian spirit as it has been expressed in some of its greatest expositors, one on Great Artists, designed to introduce students to the world of creative achievement in the visual arts by means Of a direct approach dispensing with theoretical systems and involving historical considerations only to help to pro- mote response and understanding, and a third on Types of The authors of the famed General Education Report. Clockwise: Dean Buck, Professors Ulich, Dunlop, Wright, jones, Demos, Hoadley, Gaus, Schlesinger, Wilson, and Finley. Members of KARL VIETOR , , l iimi-kv Prnfi-ssor nf Gi-rnmn Ili 'K .-Xrt, :mil Culture EDWARD ULLMAN Assirdlviilili l'rnfm-ssnr of lit-ginlull ANDREWS WANNING l'ri'L2iEliilif?l'hllii:iRmliy .min irii t 1-r.if.vSW .if i+:i.,aiaHi. Art: the Representation of Nature in European and Asiatic Art, a treatment of selected masterpieces with consideration in its broadest sense of the whole question of man's reaction to the world he lives in and the means by which . . . artists the Committee not shown in the picture include Byron S. Hollins- head, President Wilbur K. jordan of Radcliffe, I. A. Richards, Phillip J. Rulon, and George Wald. l47l v L unset

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Howard Mumford jones gives literature a social slant, is a past President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 21 SIU- dent of American and 18th century English literature- college training than he could possibly have if he had been limited to classroom work. The tutorial system was volun- tary, a student might, if he wished, make no use of it, but nearly everyone did. Although there were abuses of the meth- Od, occasional poor tutors, and some undergraduates wh0 persisted in trying to make tutorial conferences into cram- ming sessions to compensate for neglect of work, the bene- Hts of the system heavily outweighed its defects. With the introduction of the tutorial plan came an increase in the buy- ing and use of books by students, and an increase in the num- ber of honors candidates. Visiting teachers declared that Harvard students, however similar their course training and backgrounds, often seemed to think, talk, and write more ably than their fellow-undergraduates in institutions where no tutorial system existed. The Case for Tutorial Unhappily the system at Harvard, however great its educational advantages, presented grave practical difiiculties. It was expensive to employ tutors and the necessity of having a large staff sometimes led to the appointment of mediocrities and often to serious problems of tenure, since only a few of the younger men employed to tutor could hope for promotion. For the present at least these difficulties have been found in- surmountable and the tutorial system has been sadly cut down. In general the privilege of tutorial instruction on the complete individual basis has been limited to honors candidates or at 'l49l least to the men with distinguished grades in courses. Group conferences have often replaced individual meetings of student and tutor and for concentrators with the lowest records a plan of advising, often highly perfunctory, has been made the imperfect substitute for tutorial work. There is in theory a good case to be made for these changes. Why should weak students, with little ability or interest, be given costly indi- vidual instruction from which they are unwilling or unable to profit? Why not limit such instruction to the best men, those most worthy of such educational nurture and most able to make good use of it? Put thus, the questions allow for no serious argument, but neither touches the central issue. How can the ability and interest of students be justly measured, how can the really best men for tutorial privileges be fairly chosen? Course grades, especially in the first two years of college, often fail to tell the whole story, and some men rake so long to discover what they most want to do that they do not reveal their real talents until it is, as things are now, too late for them to earn the right to be tutored. Many teachers agree that the merit of the old system was that some men were awakened by sophomore tutorial work to do better throughout college than they would have otherwise, and that tutoring often transformed C men into successful honors candidates. Many agree that some honors candidates with the highest grades in courses actually need tutoring less and get less from it than their brethren whose ability is not so easily measured in marks and whose capacity for independent work is not yet trained. Ideally the choice between those who are to be tu- tored and those who are not, ifa choice is to be made, should be based on a complete evaluation of the individual's poten- tialities as well as his performance in the classroom. Such evaluations are rarely possible. The result is that at present there is reason to fear that many of the benefits of the old scheme have been lost. Students are being tutored who need Harry Levin is a keen critic of modern literature. His book on james joyce is considered the definitive work.