Like most other institutions of higher learning, Harvard relies on lectures, discussion in section meetings, and assigned reading to impart knowledge to the individual student. The efficacy of the system of instruction usually isn't questioned. It's all taken for granted. Yet at least one part of it--the lecture system--while it may be the best available, is certainly not without its drawbacks. Why should anywhere from 30 to 400 students crowd into stuffy, hot, uncomfortable lecture rooms to hear a professor who may stutter, speak indistinctly, be ill at ease, and in general be much less effective than he could be if he were expressing his thoughts in writing rather than in speech?

One oft-quoted reason for retaining the lecture system is that it offers students an opportunity to come into direct contact with "great minds." But pitifully few lecturers fall into that category; and all seem to be increasingly concerned with the recitation of factual data. The amount of personal contact between student and lecturer in a large lecture course is negligible. One of the most outstanding facts about the lecture system is its impersonalized, off-hand method of presentation. Except as far as they are restrained by a rather fluid attendance requirement, students can take lectures or leave them. Undergraduates walk into a lecture, listen long enough to find what is on the day's agenda; if they are uninterested, they walk out.

Another characteristic of the lecture system is that the instructor is forced arbitrarily to divide his material into one hour periods. Such divisions tend to present the student with an unorganized mass of facts which are supposed to constitute a course. Evidence supporting this view can be drawn from the increased reliance on such crutches as "Hymarx," not because they contain the facts about a course, but because they present it as an integrated unit. This lack of organization can also be found at the next level--the field of concentration. A student takes a number of courses in a given field, which may cover an extremely broad area of knowledge. If the student himself does not find some method of relating this conglomeration of courses, they will remain as disembodied entities.

The two remaining commonly used methods of instruction do not perform this necessary task. Discussion or section meetings and assigned reading depend for their value upon the capability of the individual instructor who conducts the meeting or assigns the reading. They can be and are valuable; but they are more devoted to penetration into the subject matter of a given course than to moulding various courses into a solid unit. Even within the limit of one course, they usually are designed to provide more facts rather than to correlate those already learned.

None of the three methods of instruction makes allowance for individual differences in talent or background. Everybody does the same minimum of work, regardless of the fact that certain students may be well versed in some phases of the course and abysmally uninformed about others.

Harvard once had a mechanism which helped the student to integrate the superficially unrelated mass of facts which he accumulates in the course of four years into a meaningful body of knowledge, and which took into account the differences in training and ability of individual students. That mechanism is known as Tutorial. Now tutorial--once the distinguishing feature of a Harvard education--is on the defensive. It's the exception rather than the rule. The genuine scholar, if he uses good judgment in choosing his courses and in going beyond the required minimum of work in order to organize his courses into a meaningful pattern, can make the most of his opportunity to study at the nation's number one college." The average undergraduate, not quite an honors candidate, is happy for four years without tutorial, without advice, without plan or overall concept--happy, but possibly in a fool's paradise.