General Education: I

The Committee on General Education conceives of its program as a countervailing force to Departmental specialization. No one doubts that the two are opposed; the only question is which force will prove the stronger.

For twelve years the advantage has been with the Departments. In this time, they have so changed the program that today it bears only a nominal resemblance to the course system outlined in the Faculty Committee report General Education in a Free Society. Gen, Ed, for example, was originally envisioned as the one educational experience to be shared by all Harvard students, a central core to which later specialized knowledge could be added. Yet no "common core" could encompass so many divergent courses, and so many elective choices, as the present program offers in each of the three basic areas.

The core concept, however, was necessary if Harvard's program was to be consistent with the underlying philosophy of the report. The Committee saw a need for "general education," then a newly coined phrase, to counter a growing sociological fragmentation, parallel to the academic fragmentation imposed by the demands of departmental specialization. The overall rationale of the core concept was to offset specialization not only in the academic context, but, if backed by programs in enough educational institutions, in the sociological framework as well. It was to do this by acquainting the members of the report's "Free Society" with their common cultural heritage.

Harvard's commitment to the core concept fell short of two extreme steps, and in avoiding them the Faculty introduced a flexibility into the definition of the program which opened a way for the Departments' later pressures for specialization. What the University carefully avoided doing was to stipulate in exact terms the subject matter to be covered in the new program's courses and then set up a special Department to staff them. These possibilities are not at all unrealistic, for it was in just this way that the University of Chicago defined its own General Education program, added, like Harvard's, as a counterbalance to the departments. Defenders of the Harvard system point out that the establishment of a new department to offset the fragmentation caused by others has its drawbacks as a measure of logic; and it is difficult to believe that either Harvard or Chicago, having once decided to borrow personnel on a part-time basis from the existing Departments, would have been able to attract men for the new courses without allowing some degree of freedom in both method and subject matter.

The original core proposals envisioned one survey each in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, and two in the Natural Sciences. But to fit students in this number of courses would raise enrollment figures far beyond the desirable limit; the Faculty decided to offer each course in several different "versions." And at this point the matter of staffing became the crucial factor in determining the Departments' influence on the shape of the emerging program. For it was inevitable that a History professor would run his version of the core Social Science course differently from a member of some other department in this area. When a Department staffs a course, it cannot help but control it.

This Departmental influence through individual instructors has been strongest in the Gen Ed Natural Science courses, the farthest removed from the recommendations of the Redbook.

The proposals for the Nat Sci's, one of which was to be devoted to the biological and one to the physical sciences, emphasized a historical approach to the subject matter. This method, it was hoped, would fill a conspicuous gap in the knowledge a science concentrator would acquire in the Departmental science courses, as well as provide a worthwhile view of science for the student never again destined to see the inside of a laboratory. The only problem was staffing, and here, because of the absence of any Department of General Education, the instructors had to come from the regular scientific disciplines. But it is in these Departments that a knowledge of the history of science is not considered a primary component of the scientific education.

Ten years later, the tendency of the Natural Science Gen Eds toward the analytical, rather than the historical, approach, is no surprise.

The men most intimately connected with the General Education program are, of course, aware of what has happened with it and in most case are not dissatisfied with the process. "We sacrifice the core concept," Professor John H. Finley, chairman of the Gen Ed Committee, explains, but in turn introduce courses which "characterize" the methodology of the overall area--Humanities, Social Sciences, or Natural Sciences--in which they lie.

If the courses now offered do indeed do this, and can continue to do so, there will be no problem. But the Departments exert a constant pull toward the morass of specialist orientation, and if they pull hard enough, they will so pervert the program as to make it not only unrecognizable, but ineffective.

(The next article of the series will use a case study to examine one aspect of the departmentalism of the General Education course: the problem of how to run a specialized course which appeals to both concentrators and non-concentrators alike.)