History, Government, and Economics are pretty well in agreement. In Government and Economics individual tutorial goes to all honors candidates, while in History most sophomore and all junior honors candidates receive group tutorial and senior honors men and a few juniors get individual attention. Next fall these departments extend tutorial to all sophomores and those juniors not having individual sessions. Economics, hitherto weak on tutorial, may offer individual attention to a few promising sophomores.
English and Social Relations have different plans. Social Relations has always offered a term of group sophomore tutorial to any concentrator. Talcott Persons. Chairman of the Department of Social Relations, notes, however, that "only a minority have taken advantage of this." Juniors in Group IV and above get group instruction, and senior honors men individual. Next fall everyone gets group tutorial except senior honors candidates.
This past term the Department experimented with a uniform tutorial curriculum and it probably will be continued next fall for sophomores because "you can be sure that people will read certain important books in their sophomore year." Junior sessions will be arranged around different elective topics.
Herschel C. Baker, the new Chairman of the Department of English, intends to corrolate tutorial to courses. All honors candidates (group 111 and above) now get individual tutorial; next year the department will have sophomore and junior groups, while retaining junior and senior individual sessions. English 1 (renamed English 10) will be compulsory for sophomore concentrators and tutorial will replace the old English 1 sections. Next year, however, those members of '55 who have taken English 1 will have special tutorial groups.
Non-Honors Seniors?
What to do with non-honors seniors has furnished much food for discussion. The Economics Department has a tentative proposal that such men should have their junior group tutor as an advisor. Faculty members are split between those like F. Skiddy von Stade. Jr. '38, Master of Kirkland House, who favor tutorial for non-honors seniors, and Smithies who thinks that such seniors would prefer to be left alone and derides the undergraduate's "juvenile desire to have frequent association with the faculty." Most professors agree that these men should receive help in preparing for generals.
Boundaries of Department and Tutor control have caused friction. Departments feel they should control-their tutorial's content, emphasis, and method of teaching. Baker termed the desire to retain it "a modest request." Senior Tutors agreed, but add that since they are responsible for the overall functioning of the program, they should have "consultative powers."
"To fuzzup fine jurisdictional lines" Smithies has appointed Kirkland's new Senior Tutor. Brienser, as Head of the Department's Board of Tutors. Printon summed up general feeling, "there will always be a certain push and pull between the departments and the Houses."
Perhaps all these small problems are merely part of one big one decentralization of the University and the rise of autonomous House units. A few men think that House loyalty should stand before college ties and even advance the thesis that Harvard should follow the English tradition and solicit separate endowments. (although Cambridge and Oxford are now getting gifts to the University) Most agree that furthering this trend would break up the college. Hence the strife over what records to field in the houses. Parsons reassuringly adds since faculty interest centers on graduate research, this trend can't go too far until graduate students are in the Houses: only then will faculty interest center on the Houses.
The House plan still has kinks in the but these will probably be settled by discussion the traditional Harvard way. Although many flowery phrases have eulogized the system, perhaps one tutor his the crux of the matter when he said. "Houses are thus samples of Harvard criticism, but the idea of the Houses is creative. The problem is adjustment."