The G.E. Report: III

General Education is still at a tender age, and its chances of fulfilling all the hopes invested in it are hardly measurable just now. Nonetheless, everyone seems to have great faith in the program--its very name evokes religious fervor--and the authors of the Council G.E. Report are no exceptions. Although they have not tried to judge General Education except by its own standards, they imply that the faults plaguing it are ones of administration and teaching, and that eliminating these is all one must do to make the program a success.

The Report's third section therefore comes as a surprise, like finding water listed among the items of a French cuisine. Just when we had become convinced that a few adjustments would remedy G.E.'s shortcomings, the Report's authors tell us that the situation is grim enough to warrant cutting the requirement from three lower-level G.E. courses to two. Gloomy statistics are paraded before us: 319 students would have the rule modified, 116 would require but two courses 38 but one, and 61 none at all.

Because of these numbers, the Report's authors felt tempted to come right out for lowering the requirement, and only the diversity among the undergraduates they polled some had taken three G.E. courses, others two, and others one--restrained them. So instead, they propose prolonging the present rule, as an experiment, subject to another popularity poll a few years hence.

Yet there are better reasons for restraint than this--they are hidden, we suspect, in the Report's figures, waiting patiently to be unearthed by an enterprising IBM machine. The causes of G.E.'s unpopularity are undoubtedly the very inadequacies of the present program that are discussed in the Report's first fifty-two pages. And if these deficiencies are correctable, as the Council seems to think, the requirement proposal is irrelevant at best. To be sure, the Council has covered itself by suggesting temporary maintenance of the satus quo, but it seems a lamentable waste of time to analyze the G.E. requirement on a popularity poll basis when it is assumed that factors affecting students' attitudes toward G.E. will soon change for the better. After a period of improvements and readjustments, the time may come to examine the course requirement in fact to question whether G.E. should be continued at all--but that time is not yet upon us.

Irrelevant Opinions

The Report's logic, then, is none too consistent. But even if it were perfect, we could not support the Council's predilection for a two-course requirement. Though the opinions of student are crucial for constructing a G.E. efficiency chart, they are not relevant to setting the standards that characterize the Harvard education. Perhaps students do dislike General Education, and perhaps they dislike exams, theses and the rigours of their courses, too but no one will say that their reaching should modify these things.

Circular Argument

The reasons for their coolness are of course relevant, but like a dog chasing its tail, this merely returns us to the faults in G.E.'s current operations. Why should the Faculty mangle G.E. because students confuse it with survey courses? Why not instead concentrate on drawing the line between the two types of instruction more carefully?

There is much to be said in favor of the three-course requirement. Each of the three areas included in the G.E. program is essential to attaining "the common core of knowledge" which G.E. is supposed to provide. To cut away one course, then, is to deny the program's underlying purpose, and once that is done, there is no reason against making all G.E. courses simply another option of the students' search for intellectual fodder. Even one concentrating in a field like Government, say, supposedly has much to gain from a year spent with the Social Sciences. If this is not true, the University might as well junk General Education altogether, and not dally with watering down the requirement.

Change in Attitude

The Council's guarded preference for the two-course requirement, and indeed the whole third section of its Report, is merely a different altitude applied to the same problem: G.E.'s heretofore indifferent success as a means of educating the whole man. We happen to share the optimism implied in the Report's first two sections, and reject the despair of its third.

This should not be interpreted as a damnation of the whole Report; the conclusions it contains are significant, and the recommendations constructive. The Report makes clear, however, that the problem of teaching a G.E. course requires a more detailed investigation. Such a study should include General Education Afh in its scope, for this course has been this target of many a well-aimed dart. The Council has begun the job, though, a job that has to be done and that so far has been done well.