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The War with the Tutors: Student-Faculty Conflict at Harvard and Yale, 1745–1771

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Kathryn McDaniel Moore
Kathryn McDaniel Moore*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

Most historical descriptions of the relationship between tutors and students in early American higher education have tended to emphasize elements of consensus and community. Historians such as Morison and Smith have suggested that the relationship was basically close and cordial, characterized by shared values and fostered by the small, homogeneous nature of the institution. While not discounting the basic validity of this description, current research has begun to examine what one scholar has characterized as the “rising curve of collective student disorder.” By focusing on conflict as opposed to consensus new insights are provided about collegiate institutions, their modes of reaction to and acceptance of change, and a truer picture of their effectiveness as agents of society emerges. Moreover, by this approach students themselves must be taken seriously as more than passive recipients but rather as a force in their own right of institutional and even societal change.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Summer 1977 , pp. 115 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. It should be noted, however, that Adams, Henry was one of the earliest American historians to suggest that information about students would be a useful tool for understanding colleges and subsequently American society. Adams also contended that “the relations between instructors and scholars were far from satisfactory,” and that “the true grievance lay in the position of semi-hostility to the students taken by the college officers… The manner, not the act, of discipline was the cause of the evil.” January 1872, as reprinted in Adams, Henry, Historical Essays (New York, 1891), pp. 80–121.Google Scholar

2. Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956) and Smith, Wilson, “The Teacher in Puritan Culture,” Harvard Education Review, 36 (1966): 402, respectively.Google Scholar

3. Allmendinger, David, “The Dangers of Ante-Bellum Student Life,” Journal of Social History, 7, 1 (Fall, 1973): 75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Rudolph, Frederick, “The Neglect of Students as a Historical Tradition,” in Dennis, Lawrence E. and Kauffman, Joseph The College and the Student (Washington, D.C., 1966), pp. 47–58.Google Scholar

5. Novak, Stephen J., The Rights of Youth: American Colleges and Student Revolt 1798–1815 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Harris, P.M.G., “The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations,” Perspectives in American History, 8 (1969): 159–346, also Gordon, Sarah H., “Smith College Students: The First Ten Classes, 1879–1888,” History of Education Quarterly, 15, 2 (Summer 1975): 147–167.Google Scholar

7. Hofstadter, Richard, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College. (N.Y., 1955), p. 24.Google Scholar

8. Shipton, Clifford K., Sibley's Harvard Graduates, IX (Cambridge, 1936), p. 68.Google Scholar

9. Smith, W., “The Teacher in Puritan Culture”: 402.Google Scholar

10. Flacks, Richard, Youth and Social Change (Chicago, 1971). Keniston, Kenneth, Radicals and Militants: Annotated Bibliography on Empirical Research on Campus Unrest, (Lexington, Mass., 1973); Morison, , Intellectual Life, and Wertenbaker, Thomas J., Princeton, 1746–1896 (Princeton, 1946), and Shipton, , Sibley's Harvard Graduates, passim .Google Scholar

11. See also Novak, , The Rights of Youth, especially pages 38–57. For a detailed description of the characteristics of Harvard students who were involved in various acts against the college, its governors and property during the period 1636 to 1724, and for the eighteenth century generally see my “Old Saints and Young Sinners: A Study of Student Discipline at Harvard College 1636–1724,” (Unpublished Phd. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1972). This research has tended to confirm the findings of other scholars regarding the upperclass backgrounds of student offenders.Google Scholar

12. Allmendinger, David, Paupers and Scholars (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

13. Ibid. p. 110.Google Scholar

14. Dexter, Franklin B., Yale Biographies and Annals (New York, 1885); also “Record of the Judgments and Acts of the President and Tutors of Yale College 1751–1768,” 3 vols., (handwritten ms. Yale University Archives). It should be noted that toward the end of Clap's term several tutors resigned in protest against his policies. But for the most part I have presumed the tutors were Clap's deputies.Google Scholar

15. Bailey, William, “A Statistical Study of the Yale Graduates, 1701–92,” Yale Review (1908): 400–426.Google Scholar

16. I concur with Bailey's assertion that farming is probably the least accurate estimate. In his survey 28 percent of the fathers were farmers; of the multiple offenders, 16 percent.Google Scholar

17. Dexter, , Yale Biographies, 11, p. 415.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., 111, p. 68.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., 11, p. 429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Shipton, , Sibley's Harvard Graduates, XV, pp. 492–3, 224 and XVI, pp. 253–4.Google Scholar

21. Ms. Harvard University Archives, 1769.Google Scholar

22. Shipton, , Sibley's Harvard Graduates, VIII, pp. 43–44.Google Scholar