UNDERGRADUATE EYE TO THE FUTURE

Instead of taking it on the chin for four years without protest, a student committee last spring dashed out its own conception of what a college education should stand for. Its report is now being considered by the Faculty and may possibly lead to a criticism and re-evaluation of Harvard's curriculum.

Struck by the lack of a determined goal towards which each undergraduate should aim, the Committee set up its definition of a liberal education as one which "frees human beings from ignorance and prejudice" and gives them "the intellectual tools with which they can confront new problems successfully." To the Committee four years of college should mean more than a number of courses strait-jacketed into a field of concentration. Rather they should have a "definite content.

In the place of the present haphazard distribution, the Committee would substitute five required introductory courses--two in the humanities, two in the natural sciences, and one in the social sciences. Taken in Freshman and Sophomore year, they would prepare the way for natural progress to a field of concentration.

With education splitting itself into more and more scaled pigeon-holes, such a revision would offer a broad and stable cultural sweep to the undergraduate. During his first year and a half at college he would gain perspective, he would study the field of human experience before tucking himself off in a corner of applied Biology or Urban Sociology. At the slight sacrifice of the choice of a few distribution courses, he would add a definite content to his liberal education upon which he can build.

In considering the possibility of a revised curriculum, the Faculty will undoubtedly be concerned with the difficulties of putting the report into effect. But the undergraduate, once only too willing to leave education to his elders, will have much greater interest in the theory behind any possible change. More and more is his own education becoming the subject of his thought and attention. To organizations around Harvard, a new field is opening. Inter-house debating should keep the question alive and hash out a problem which should be as vital to most undergraduates as their own courses. Other groups like the Student Union of Phillips Brooks, which have partly concerned themselves with education, should enlarge their activities towards this end even further. From the Boylston Chemical Society to the Council of Government Concentrators each has its own slant, each should add its energy is the discussion. With the lively interest of the student body and the mature cooperation of the Faculty, the Committee's report should be in the hands of a sympathetic and forward-looking jury.