Word: handlinism
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Some tutors grumbled about Handlin's tactic, but he quickly set up the promised five-man committee with himself as chairman. The other committee members were, like Handlin, all prominent senior members of the Department: Giles Constable, Elliott Perkins, David E. Owen, and Bernard Bailyn. The eight tutors had one meeting with the committee before the academic year ended in June. "We talked quite openly about what was going on," said one, "and reached a sort of agreement about sophomores." But the question or honors remained undecided, particularly whether the senior seminars would be used as equal substitutes...
Where did the junior generals come from and what would they do? The tutors didn't seem to know. There was some speculation that the exams might be used to screen juniors applying for the honors program, but both Perkins and Donald H. Fleming, who replaced Handlin as chairman of the Department for 1966-67, said the junior generals probably would not reduce the number of honors candidates...
...Handlin later explained that the exams would eliminate the "very small minority" of honors applicants who would not profit from writing a thesis, and would test a student's entire knowledge of his field in a comprehensive way. "It seemed reasonable that since you were eliminating one requirement (the sophomore essay), it made room for another," he added...
...Also, Handlin said, the sentiment of the Department has always been against any limitation on the number of people writing theses. The presumption, he said, has been that anyone who is good enough to get into Harvard is good enough to do a thesis...
...senior faculty treated the tutors' proposals as something selfishly of the tutors, for the tutors and by the tutors. They neglected the "teacherly" motivations for reforms such as the senior seminar. Fleming spoke of the tutors' trying to "unload" thesis writers into the seminars, and Handlin asserted that, all things being equal, no undergraduate would opt for the senior seminars, and some people might have to be forced into the program...