What's the point of tutorials?
Why is it that Oxford students are so reluctant to give up the tutorial system? We spend half our lives buried in books, reeking of panic sweat and coffee, crushed under the weight of knowing that whatever you produce, impressing your tutor is nigh on impossible. Then, when some don descends, as if an angel from on high, to suggest that perhaps we could have fewer tutes and more classes all hell breaks loose! Stint reform? Not in this lifetime.
But why the obsessive attachment to what is essentially a form of self-mortifi cation? Let’s face it, it’s not going to be your favourite hour of the week… and if it is you need your head looked at. If your tutes go anything like mine do then the words ‘thin’ (used in relation to an essay • even though you printed it on high quality paper this week), ‘unsubstantiated’ and ‘well…’ will be just a handful of a battery of terms used by your tutor to make you fl inch on demand.
Not that you can blame them for wanting to hurt you.
How would you feel if you had to sit in a room for eight hours a day with a succession of under-brained, over-opinionated students, none of whom seem to be able to grasp the fact that you too have read the ‘Very Short Introductions’ series, some of whom clearly haven’t slept and others who spent valuable research time prettifying themselves in an attempt to distract you? The only thing that would upset me more than having to teach the average student would be having to teach the exceptiona
ones: training the person who will one day debunk everything you’ve worked on, forcing you out of posterity and potentially out of a job, would be pretty depressing. At base I get the feeling that the reason for our vehement defence of the tutorial system is nothing more than Oxford snobbery. We can’t get rid of the ridiculous and arcane têteà- tête because that would make us like (whisper it) a normal university.
What would make us special? How would we know that we’re getting a better education than our friends at Durham? We wouldn’t of course, and the reason is that we’re not. When even our Chancellor is forced to admit that Brookes students get a better history degree than the BA (Oxon) it should be a cue to the rest of us to admit that, actually, we hate tutes and always have. Let’s junk them and get on with the more pleasant bits of uni life.
17th Nov 2005