By Henry Mayr-Harting LHD ’98
Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History Emeritus
Oxford University
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2007
The following is excerpted from a lecture delivered at Lawrence on November
9, 2006, that was one of the events of the college’s “Year of the
Tutorial,” an examination of individualized instruction as practiced
at Oxford University and in American liberal arts colleges. The series, which
also has included presentations by faculty members and students, culminated
in a two-day conference on tutorial education held
at Lawrence on March 31 and April 1.
The Oxford tutorial system has developed far more in accord with a muddle
theory of history than with a conspiracy or idealism theory. At both Oxford
and Cambridge, there existed already in the Middle Ages some idea of a tutorial
arrangement as an association of a master with one or two younger scholars,
working and
sleeping in the same room.
All that became heavily overlaid in the 18th century. In Oxford by the first
half of the 19th century, the tutorial system was generally a system of class
teaching. Even the best of the college tutors sat at the head of a long table
with perhaps 15 students, either addressing them or, if it was Latin or Greek,
calling upon them to translate in turn.
Many were the complaints about the arrangements, the standards of the “tutors,” and
the vast range of abilities in these classes.
Not surprisingly, serious students and those who wanted to do well in the university’s
examinations, sought out private tutors, on a one-to-one basis. In the academic
year 1840-41, it has been calculated that some 150 undergraduates, about one-fifth
of the total number then at Oxford, used private tutors, paying £40 to £50
a year each (more than twice the cost of college tuition fees).
You can see what an advantage this gave to the gentry as against the poor students
among the undergraduates, and you can see what must have been the pressure
on colleges to provide an effective system of private tuition themselves. Between
about 1850 and 1880 — and only then — it became normal for colleges
to appoint tutors to give private tuition.
The Jowett ideal
If one man was more responsible than any other, not for the original development
of the tutorial system, but for fine-tuning it and gearing it to a particular
ideal of education, it was Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford,
from 1870 to 1893 (pictured).
In Jowett’s time, there was a party in Oxford who wanted the university
to become a great research institution like the German universities, but the
idea of a research-driven university, with departments and professors rather
than colleges taking the lead, was wormwood to Jowett. His ideal was to have
undergraduates read out essays to tutors, particularly on ancient philosophy
and history, and to discuss them with those tutors. He did not wish to train
researchers but to develop powers of mind and of clear, cogent expression which
would equip undergraduates to take their place in public life, in the civil
service, in the church, and not least in the administration of the emerging
British Empire.
The weekly essay, now decried as useless by some undergraduates, became the
engine of the tutorial system, but how little it was regarded as an instrument
of professionalization, rather than as an instrument for clarity and interest
of expression, is shown by the Balliol institution of undergraduates reading
out some essays to tutors in quite other subjects than their own.
At the present time in Oxford, there is much talk about shifting the balance
between graduate supervision and undergraduate tutorials, from undergraduate
to graduate, as well as about cutting down on tutorial commitments and their
expense. Many academics — and those by no means only in the arts subjects — would
not be happy with this shift, because they still adhere to ideals shaped in
the late 19th century. That is not out of nostalgia but out of a perception
of where Oxford’s strengths lie. The Jowett ideal lives on!
The coach and the colleague
There are two axioms about tutorials which I take in tandem. One is that they
are designed to help students think for themselves. The other is that what
distinguishes the tutorial from other forms of teaching — i.e., lectures
and seminars — is that it turns on the discussion of the student’s
own work and not on the agenda of a teacher.
I propose two principal models of a tutorial role which together, and generally
in some kind of combination, cover most cases. These models are one, the
coach, and two, the colleague.
As I have said, private tuition in early 19th-century Oxford very often began
with the more serious students seeking out effective coaches. Almost no pupil,
however intelligent, can nowadays do without this element of coaching. Every
pupil, if he or she is to produce written work, needs a good reading list.
Many tutors nowadays supply gigantic reading lists for each essay with no guidance
as to what are the key items to read or in what order one might read them.
I regard that as downright irresponsible, often mere vanity and show-off on
the part of the tutor, and likely to discourage even the ablest of undergraduates.
Every pupil needs a critique of their essays (or written work), how they’ve
structured them, how good their grasp of the issues has been, how well they’ve
caught the interest of the subject. However good an essay is, a pupil needs
to hear why the tutor thinks it a good essay. Students need to understand what
makes a good piece of work a good piece of work, so that they can repeat the
performance knowingly. I’ve never seen a pupil look bored, even if I
went on at length, while I was talking about the merits of their essay.
You may ask what such coaching has to do with teaching people how to think
for themselves. It has a lot to do with it. Everyone needs to know something,
whether the facts of history or the arguments of philosophers, to be able to
think for themselves, and they need to know how to develop a structure to express
their knowledge and thoughts, so a tutor has to coach them in these things.
You may also ask why such instruction cannot be given just as well to a class
of 20 all together as to a single individual. The answer is that a tutorial
is about the student’s own work. Some students don’t need such
instruction at all, while for many it has to be varied. In any case, a student
cannot develop structure and a sure discernment of the most important issues
without week after week of experience. It cannot be achieved from one week
to the next at the click of fingers. The advice of the coach needs to be persistent
but finely tuned from week to week. That is why I think a very minimum of four
tutorials with one tutor is necessary.
Now to the other model: the tutor as colleague. Rather than attempting definitions
of colleaguely mode, I’d like to quote from the obituary of Alan Raitt,
one of the finest of Oxford tutors (his subject was French), which appeared
in The Times of London on September 21. It seems to me a perfect expression
of the tutorial relationship as colleaguely, albeit between senior and junior
colleagues:
Raitt’s air of restrained learning as a college tutor filled the room, far more than any showy erudition could have done, and students were keen to impress him. Even those who were not especially gifted or diligent found reserves of intellectual pride.
I do not see a sense of equality as the key to this colleaguely relationship,
although pupils are sometimes more than the equal of their tutors intellectually
and even in knowledge. I prefer the idea that mutual respect is the key.
The question of questioning
There seems to be an idea abroad in Oxford, amounting in some quarters almost
to a fetish, that questioning a student about his or her work is the proper
mode of conducting a tutorial. The argument runs that, if there is to be
any equality (I prefer colleagueship) between tutor and student, it means
that
the students have to be pushed, as it were, into the role of teacher. Out
of their lips rather than the tutor’s must come what needs to be said,
and what needs to be said can best be elicited from the student by questioning
according to the Socratic method. That is the way to get students thinking
for themselves.
I entirely accept that questioning the student may have its uses in a tutorial,
especially in philosophy tutorials, but the kind of tutors who are doctrinaire
about its usefulness are sometimes equally doctrinaire about what they want
the student to say in answer to their questioning. Indeed, questioning at its
worst can become a form of brainwashing. At its less worse it can often be
embarrassing to students, particularly as not all tutors are gifted in conducting
it and can seem inquisitorial. It can also underestimate the interest and pride
of students in their work, to assume that having just written something about
a subject themselves, they would not be interested to hear, or could not learn
from, what a senior partner in learning (so to speak) had to say about that
subject. Taciturnity does not necessarily mean that a student is not thinking
for him or herself.
There are many other equally legitimate modes of tutorial teaching — e.g., discursive conversation, a genuine argument between equals, the wish of pupils
to do the questioning themselves, genuine inquiries from either side about
books or articles or policies or hypotheses or personalities, and even sometimes,
yes, a tutor’s monologue.
Quo vadis, tutorial system?
I am full of hope, as you ought to be. First, I believe that the tutorial system
has such intrinsic value, recognized still, if not by all Oxford academics,
by a goodly majority, that it will not be allowed to become fatally corrupted
or fall by the wayside.
Second, it has so powerful a pastoral and a collegiate element built into it,
that I suspect the undergraduates themselves would, if necessary, come to its
rescue.
Third, younger academics seem so adaptable to the world they live in, so
resilient, that I’d trust them to see how the tutorial cloth can be
cut to suit the new coat, where I personally cannot necessarily see it.
Henry Mayr-Harting is Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History Emeritus
at Oxford University. A Fellow of the British Academy, he served as Reader
in
Medieval History and Fellow of St. Peter’s College before being named
Regius Professor in 1997. The professorship is a Crown appointment and one
of Oxford’s most distinguished positions. He was awarded the honorary
degree Doctor of Humane Letters at Lawrence University’s Commencement
in 1998.
1864 photo of Benjamin Jowett courtesy of the Getty Museum
