Word: grading
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...even greater commitment on time and energy is the grade system, which lures--and always will lure--the student away from independent study until independent study is incorporated into the grade system. This is one reason that the thesis is so successful: it eventually receives a grade--an evaluation of a (presumably) scholarly piece of work by established scholars in the field. But when it comes to a choice between preparing for tutorial or studying for the encumbrances which automatically come with a grade system--term papers, hour exams, finals, generals--, it is only the powerfully-willed student who will...
...support for a grade system as a potential deterrent to glib generalization is related to the third, and posibly most basic, obstacle to independent study in the present framework. This has nothing to do with Harvard, except in so far as Harvard helps produce it: the increasing complexity of knowledge. When administrators lament the fact that fewer students today are engaged in individual research than there were in the 1930's, one is tempted to remind them that things are more complex and fragmented now than they were then. While there may have been seven books on Moby Dick then...
Merely because the fragmentation of knowledge, the grade system, and extracurricular activities all conflict with independent study does not mean that independent study should be discarded as impossible: quite the contrary, the fact that students can professionalize extracurricular activities and still "beat" the grade system, and the fact that knowledge is so complex, point to the conclusion that any advances in learning and any achievement of real depth of knowledge must be sought outside the course system as it now exists. Take an example. Suppose a student wants to study Dante from the psychological point of view. Where should...
...winter period, but for the rest, it would be like the present reading periods put back-to-back and doubled. It would not be similar to the present reading period, however, for now this is really just a "cram period"--and one of the greatest aids in beating the grade system...
...would have to be condensed by about two weeks, but the reward would be a period of 12 weeks for concentrated research. And for students, this period would provide the chance to revitalize the tutorial program, the most intelligent way to incorporate independent study for all into the course-grade system, and a great opportunity for giving purpose to the House system. During this winter period, college-wide extra-curricular activities should be at a minimum (The CRIMSON, for instance, should publish only twice each week), and instead House discussion groups would give some intellectual life to Houses which...