'Harvard Parent' was on the mark

To the Editors of the Crimson:

My hearty congratulations to the "Harvard Parent" who "spoke out" in her letter printed in your Friday, February 24, 1984 edition of the Crimson. She is indeed describing a situation which exists. In the department in which I am a graduate student, where the abuses are, perhaps, not quite as blatant as those she has described. I have seen graduate students hurriedly preparing for tutorial meetings (tutorials which are often the only exposure an undergraduate will have to intensive training in his major field) no more than one half an hour before they have to teach. Even more shocking is the graduate student who announces that he never bothers to read the books for the course in which he has been given the responsibility to grade papers. He will just read the exams, he assures a friend, and give an "A" to those who "sound intelligent."

In an editorial of a few weeks ago, the editors of the Crimson expressed the hope that the incoming Dean Spence, while looking into the needs of graduate students, would also show some interest in the needs of the undergraduate population. I would like to suggest that the two concerns are intimately related. Graduate students often begin their graduate training with little more intensive knowledge of their field than the area which they researched to write their senior theses. As graduate students, their teaching and researching efforts are often left inadequately supervised by faculty members who find their own research of more interest. An administrator who encourages the efforts of those faculty members who are actively interested in teaching, and encourages departments to seek such a quality in those individuals to whom they award tenure, will be encouraging the development of a professional approach to instruction and scholarly research on all levels. The value of facilitating scholarly research on the upper levels of the academic hierarchy is unquestionable, but to do so at the expense of instruction on the lower levels is a remarkably short-sighted substitution of short-term for long-term goals. The neglected graduate students of today are the mediocre scholars of tomorrow; the undergraduates they, in turn, neglect, are too often frustrated in their own efforts to grow intellectually in an environment which should have so much to offer. If the changes that are to come in Harvard University's administration signal a reversal in this trend, it can only be of benefit to the entire Harvard community. Emily Sochmer   GSAS. Department of History