ABSTRACT
By the time someone reaches college or university he or she will already have a definite moral character. This may change, but for the most part subsequent development will be in directions already determined at earlier stages — the child is almost always ‘father to the man’. Even so, higher education should not neglect the personal formation of students. In the past, particularly in small institutions, there was a concern for the moral well-being of what were perceived to be young people in transition to full adulthood. One form — perhaps I should say one ‘forum’ — in which this concern could be expressed was the individual tutorial. Tutors thought of themselves as charged with the responsibility of helping students form themselves, or as it might have been said in the nineteenth century, ‘cultivate virtue’. Now, however, reference to this way of thinking would almost certainly be derided as paternalistic, patronizing and unduly ‘directional’, an infringement of student autonomy.
