ENTER GEOLOGY

Second of the bona fide sciences to yield under pressure of the spreading tutorial system is the Geology Department. The creation two years ago of the Department of Bio-chemical Sciences, removing as it did the grievous errors in pre-medical education, was yet only a slight breach in what seemed an impregnable wall. Then came, in April of last year, the announcement that the Department of Biology would begin the following academic year under the tutorial system. The decision announced today gives an appearance of progression to these events, a progression that can be concluded only with the adoption by the Departments of Chemistry and Physics of a plan which becomes yearly more linked in educational discussion with the name of Harvard.

The laboratory has never been denied place as the workshop of reality, but the tutorial system has seemed to carry a flavor of books, hearth fire and mellow phrasing that has little in common with laboratory coats, Bunsen burners and quantitative analysis. The sciences had been thought of as a multitude of parts, subdivided and resubdivided in an arrangement with so few cross relationships that the tutorial system, which aims to give the gazing student a view of the whole field, had little application here. Teaching the young idea geology, for instance, has been a matter of cumulation of courses like Economic Geology, Paleontology, and Physiography.

The advent of the tutorial system into geology has been preceded by experimentation in isolated geologica courses. Most significant is the fact that the Department has not been content with this; that, as Professor Mather says elsewhere in this issue, to the other requirements of a degree from Harvard College in geology has been added an ability, certified by General Examination to orient oneself within the entire field. Only the first tentative year of the tutorial system, in the Department of History, Government and Economics, takes precedence over the experiment of the Departments of Geology and Biology. The eyes of all to whom the tutorial system is important, and particularly of the faculty heads of the Departments of Physics and Chemistry, will focus on those Freshmen who this month elect geology or biology as their field of concentration.