Tutorship

“ The Tutorials Every good student knows that his learning must be double. He must be acquiring the skills that go with the subject matter, but he must also get to know his teacher. The converse of this is even more important for good teaching: the good teacher knows that he must be in the learning process himself and he must also know his pupil. The tutorial class, which is composed of not more than ten students meeting five times a week, provides the ideal conditions for collaborative study and for the manifold teaching and learning relations that hold in a company of good friends. ”

“ Undergraduates are now more closely looked after, as far as reading goes, than perhaps they like—certainly much more than Shelley would have liked. But when we turn from study to the conduct of life, is it not plain that no official interference can be of real value? Friendship and confidence may, and often does, exist between tutors and pupils. There are tutors so happily gifted with sympathy, and with a kind of eternal youth of heart and intellect, that they become the friends of generation after generation of freshmen. ”

“ The undergraduates were fee-paying members of the college or poor scholars. Some of the fee-paying members or gentlemen-commoners or fellow-commoners were the sons of the nobility and gentry and even shared the fellows' table. The undergraduate students were required to have a particular tutors, who were responsible for their moral behavior as well as their academic studies. It was through the tutors that modern studies fit for the education of a Renaissance gentleman became the norm. Those students not seeking a degree could devise their own courses of study with their tutors' permission. ”

“ How many private tutors I have met with, who think they have done their duty when they have taught their pupils the sufficient knowledge of Latin and Greek, and mathematics to enable them to enter the universities, without a thought beyond—without pointing out to them, clearly and unmistakably, whatever may be their station in life, that they must have responsibilities, and that they should so act in everything they do here, that they may be ever prepared for entering the life which is to endure for ever! ”

“ As a knowledge of the principles and method of teaching seems to be one thing, and skill in the application of principles quite another, it is necessary that ample opportunity be given in the training schools connected with the Normal Schools for practice in teaching by the normal students as they study the principles. Such practice, if systematically [148] and intelligently conducted during the course of instruction, will prepare the normal graduate to enter upon the practice of his profession with the advantages of experience. ”

“ If wisdom can speak in no other tongue but Greek or Latin, you do well; or if mathematics will make a man a gentleman, or natural philosophy but teach him to make a bow, he may be of some service in introducing your son into good societies, and supporting him in them when he had done. But the upshot will be generally this, that on the most pressing occasions of addresses, if he is not a mere man of reading, the unhappy youth will have the tutor to carry, and not the tutor to carry him. ”

“ I know that, let the tutor be ever so anxious to perform his duty, let the pupil be ever so ready to listen, times will come when good intentions and precepts may be forgotten; but such failings off should not damp the energies of either, but with sorrow for their derelictions, and earnest prayer for strength from above, they should rise to new exertions, and each year will afford to the tutor greater encouragement, as he sees in the lives of his pupils the fruit of his instruction. ”

“ You distinguish between the teacher and the tutor. Another piece of folly! Do you make any distinction between the pupil and the scholar? There is only one science for children to learn—the duties of man. This science is one, and, whatever Xenophon may say of the education of the Persians, it is indivisible. Besides, I prefer to call the man who has this knowledge master rather than teacher, since it is a question of guidance rather than instruction. He must not give precepts, he must let the scholar find them out for himself. ”

“ You consider somewhat before you send your boy to school, what kind of a man the master is;--whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give him full authority over your son, and show some respect to him yourself;--if he comes to dine with you, you do not put him at a side table: you know also that, at college, your child's immediate tutor will be under the direction of some still higher tutor,--for whom you have absolute reverence. ”

“ Both of our tutors being young, at least as tutors, and some of the senior students excelling more than they could pretend to do in several branches of study, they indulged us in the greatest freedoms, so that our lectures had often the air of friendly conversations on the subjects to which they related. ”

“ For a subordinate place where there is not too much executive work, I should prefer the young person well prepared to the teacher who has so much experience that they feel that they know all that is needed to be known.
Most young persons, unless they have a good professional course to begin with, teach first near their home. The time is coming, and let us hope coming rapidly, when one or two years of professional study must precede any attempt at teaching. ”

“ And more so, if this servant has any direction of the child's education; and still much more so, if it be his tutor, though Mr. Locke says, there is no doubt, if there be a tutor, that it should be done by him.
For, dear Sir, is there no doubt, that the tutor should lay himself open to the aversion of the child, whose manners he is to form? Is not the best method a tutor can take, in order to enforce the lessons he would inculcate, to try to attract the love and attention of his pupil by the most winning ways he can possibly think of? ”

“ When the tutor is about to give him the noose, he takes him apart, and solemnly enjoins it upon him to use it with skill, as it is to be the means of his earning his food, and as his safety will depend upon the skill with which it is used. After he receives it, he tries his skill in strangling a person the first opportunity that offers. ”

“ When Irv and Ed reported the voyage and the study club plan to Mrs. Dupont, she entered enthusiastically into the scheme.
“Don’t go to school at all this year,” she said. “Come to me instead. When bright boys have made up their minds to study as hard as they can without any forcing, all they need is a tutor to help them when they need help. I’ll be the tutor. The old schoolroom in my house, where I taught you boys and your fathers the multiplication table long before graded schools were thought of in this town, is unoccupied. ”

“ Every student under the degree of master of arts was required to have a tutor, thus regularizing the position of fellow-commoners, pensioners, sizars, and subsizars as members of the College, and bringing them under the same rule as scholars. ”

“ But, evidently, much would depend upon the character of the tutor. A high-minded, well-balanced scholar might be of inestimable service to a youth eager to improve his opportunities. But the number of well-equipped tutors must have been relatively small. The low ebb to which education had sunk at Cambridge and Oxford had brought it about that only an occasional scholar was even moderately competent to direct the work of his pupil, to say nothing of serving as a guide on the Continent. ”

“ The whole system is based on individualism—on a free and easy relationship between Tutor and taught. It is conscientious individual effort under capable and sympathetic supervision that leads to success in the final examinations—‘the Schools’. The Tutor advises the student to attend certain lecture courses; he suggests certain books for private reading, the result of which is generally embodied in the form of an essay, or essays, to be read to the Tutor once or twice a week. ”

“ Do not deceive yourself; it is not even a master you have hired for him, it is a flunkey, who will soon train such another as himself.
There is much discussion as to the characteristics of a good tutor. My first requirement, and it implies a good many more, is that he should not take up his task for reward. There are callings so great that they cannot be undertaken for money without showing our unfitness for them; such callings are those of the soldier and the teacher. ”

“ The time given to lesson outlines and practice with fellow pupil-teachers may be considered a part of the professional study rather than of practice-teaching. The period of practice with pupils must not be too short, whether we consider the interests of the pupils or of the teachers-in-training. ”

“ The studies which he sets him upon, are but as it were the exercises of his faculties, and employment of his time, to keep him from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application, and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect. For who expects, that under a tutor a young gentleman should be an accomplish'd critick, orator, or logician? ”

“ Now, in the seclusion in which I live, and for the very limited amount of money my husband has consented to expend for this purpose, how can I hope to find such a tutor as your friend describes? Besides, how can I induce Frederick to accept a tutor in his present irritated state of mind? Besides, the more conscious a tutor is of his value, his devotion, and his dignity, the less inclined he will be to submit to my son's violence. ”

“ The young men whom I knew at the time they went in for their final examination, were certainly well grounded in classics, and what they knew they knew thoroughly.
The personal relations existing between undergraduates and their tutors were very intimate. A tutor took a pride in his pupils, and often became their friend for life. The teaching was almost private teaching, and the idea of reading a written lecture to a class in college did not exist as yet. It was real teaching with questions and answers ”

“ People are therefore [320] mistaken when they assume that private tutors are capable of furnishing an equivalent only for the lowest classes in gymnasia. A far greater difficulty lies in the fact that even the most skilful and active tutor cannot give as many lessons as a school provides, and that accordingly more has to be left to the pupil’s own efforts. To be sure, this is exactly the mode of instruction which suits the bright student better than one that must accommodate itself to the many, and which on that account must progress but slowly. ”

“ II My profession has been that of a tutor, and it thus befell that I was under the necessity of learning as much as I was able, and even going out of my way to seek those lessons at which all the pages of life are open for us, and even, as it were, turning over wayside stones, and looking under wayside weeds in the search for them ”

“ I was too delicate to be sent to school at five years old, like other boys. My doctor uncle said it was not to be thought of. Since, however, I could not grow up altogether in ignorance, it was decided that I should have a tutor of my own.
So a tutor was engaged who quickly won my unreserved affection and made me very happy. The tutor came every morning and taught me all I had to learn. He was a tutor whom one could ask about anything under the sun and he would always know. First, there was the ABC. That was mastered in a few lessons. ”

“ For the teacher a study of the variability in achievement among the members of his own class ought to result in special attention to those who need special help, especially a kind of teaching which will remove particular difficulties. There should also be offered unusual opportunity and more than the ordinary demand be made of those who show themselves to be more capable than the ordinary pupils. ”

“ I have followed the profession of a private tutor for five years, and during this time have felt so keenly its disagreeable nature,—to be compelled to look upon imperfections which must ultimately entail the worst consequences, and yet be hindered in the endeavour to establish good habits in their stead,—that I had given it up altogether for a year and a half, and, as I thought, for ever. ”

“ A tutor, who from seven in the morning till ten at night, with very brief intervals for food and exercise, was occupied in teaching and hearing lessons, in examining maps, in correcting themes and verses, and who could not in that space of time hear one-fifth of the lessons his pupils were supposed, by a wild stretch of tutorial imagination, to learn, was not in a position to bestow much attention on either the morals or the manners of the boys. ”

“ The Teacher a Guide, Not a Task-Master
“... Progressive teachers will encourage the use of all the senses, training the pupils in both observation and judgment; and instead of hearing recitations only, will spend most of the time teaching how to use various sources of information, including life activities as well as books; how to reason about the information thus acquired; and how to express forcefully and logically the conclusions reached. Teachers will inspire a desire for knowledge, and will serve as guides in the investigations undertaken, rather than as task-masters. ”

“ The qualifications of a good tutor are very freely discussed. The first qualification I should require in him, and this one presupposes many others, is, that he shall not be capable of selling himself. ”

“ The Academic Teacher, of whom chiefly we have to speak, ought to train the Student who has been made acquainted with the nature and dignity of his calling, to the capacity of receiving the Idea, and to the power of developing it anew, and giving it a form peculiar to himself:—he should do all this if he can. ”