Junior Tutorial

Junior tutorial is another matter. Where the role sophomore tutorial has been defined and redefined, the role of junior tutorial remains totally undefined. The Program's founders wished the first half of the term "to be taught in small groups and to deal with the theoretical and methodological problems of the students' special field." The two goals are inconsistent, for there are a myriad of possible "special fields" while there can only be three groups, given the size of the Program's staff.

To remedy this inconsistency, the Committee attempted to organize all the possible special fields or problems into three roughly defined categories; industrial societies, underdeveloped societies, and international affairs. A tutorial group was set up around each category.

But the inconsistency remains. Junior year tutors still face an insoluble problem. For the sake of coherence, instructors must oblige each student to learn about something called industrial society or underdeveloped society or international affairs. Conversely, to serve the particular interests of each student, they must permit a great deal of individual choice in reading assignments and research. This tension between coherence and liberality has produced some interesting experiments and a certain amount of creative ferment. Junior tutorial has not, however, given most students what they really need: a chance to gather around a single, well-defined topic all the methods picked up in sophomore tutorial and all the factual material learned in regular course work.

Senior Year

Choosing a thesis topic has, thus, become a rather arbitrary process. In theory the student has selected a topic at the beginning of sophomore year. In fact he chooses one in February of his junior year or later, having taken a strictly methodological sophomore tutorial, an ill-defined and largely methodological junior tutorial, and series of courses that are frequently unrelated.

Finding a senior tutor is no easier. The Social Studies staff is not large enough to accommodate the wide variety of thesis topics that develop. Most senior tutors must therefore come from other departments. And, because of the University's financial system, these tutors outside the Program must supervise social studies these without pay. The is not an inviting proposition for most Faculty members, and many seniors find the Great Tutor Search a harrowing process.

But simply to list the program's administrative and curricular bottlenecks is perhaps to lose the forest in the trees. It is less important that a program has problems that that the faculty and students in the program recognize and care about those programs. In Social Studies they do. It is the only department in the College where tutors, professors, and students really talk, debate, and worry together about the education they are giving and receiving.

In the past, the Program has graduated many dissatisfied students, but it has rarely produced apathetic or quietly disgusted ones. When someone complains that he has learned nothing from the Program and proceeds to detail a better reading list for each year's tutorial, one begins to wonder why other departments are not turning out equally "dissatisfied" scholars.