General Education

The appointment of a Faculty Committee to review the General Education Program will surely provoke a fresh debate on the purposes and methods of the Harvard undergraduate education.

The original intent of general education was to prepare men for citizenship by making them aware of their common cultural heritage. Through required courses in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, students would become acquainted with disciplines other than their own, and would be the richer as individuals, no matter what their ocupation. This idea was embodied in the 1945 report of the Conant Committee on General Education, General Education in a Free Society. Known as the Redbook, the report served as a model for general education programs at colleges across the country.

Since 1945, a number of trends have combined to force undergraduate education away from the broad conception of the Redbook and toward a narrower, more functional conception. The rapid rise in admissions, and in the number of students graduating with honors and going on to graduate school, has lent strength to a point of view which regards Harvard College less as a general preparation for life than a way station on the road to still higher education.

The College has held to some idea of general education, but curriculum changes and innovations in academic policy have indicated that the commitment is not an enthusiastic one. The feeling that only Honors concentration is really respectable--a feeling that undergraduates themselves have encouraged--, the institution of Sophomore Standing, and the freshman seminar program are all pressures for undergraduate specialization: the earlier and the more thoroughly the better.

There are many arguments against the kind of general education the Redbook proposed. It can be argued that Harvard should accept the role of preparing students for graduate school and should train them as scholars, because any other role would be unrealistic, given the intellectual level of the student body and the demands of an increasingly specialized society.

It can be argued that a General Education Program will not work because it cannot keep the support of the Faculty: the commitment to departmental specialization and scholarly research must inevitably supersede the commitment to liberal education and the teaching of undergraduates.

It can be argued, finally, that the cause of education is not really served by dishing up a potpourri which gives each individual a common and superficial core of knowledge. All Harvard really teaches anyone is to think--a goal that can be achieved through specialization as well as through general education.

If the Committee adopts this attitude, the logical conclusion will be to recommend that the General Education Program be abolished or severely curtailed. A move to abolish general education would probably gain little support, if only because the Faculty will vote to continue the program without really committing itself to put it into effect.

But the Committee might well consider the possibility of putting General Education more under the control of the departments, by letting lower level Gen Ed courses double as introductions to the departmental programs. If the Committee decided that courses like Gov 1 and English 10 are broad enough to serve the purpose of General Education surveys, putting them under the control of the departments would insure proper staffing and the maintenance of high enough intellectual standards--perennial problems in any general education program. But while this proposal might work well administratively, the final result would probably be to subvert the idea of general education.

Despite increasing specialization both inside and outside the College, general education is not necessarily obsolete. There is still something to be said for the notion that scientists and non-scientists should have an idea of each other's work, and for the idea that a knowledge of their common cultural heritage somehow makes men better human beings. General education and specialization are not incompatible; indeed the more fragmented and specialized a society becomes the more important it is to promote communication between individuals in widely separated fields.

But if the Committee thinks it possible to adjust the original conception of general education to a world which is hostile to anything that smacks of dilettantism, it must advocate steps to keep the program alive, and more importantly, it must find a way to stimulate active support for general education among the Faculty.

In the end, general education can only survive if the Faculty wants it to. The commitment to the program must be more than a statement of principles and a vote of support; it must include a willingness on the part of professors and associate professors to teach General Education courses, and feeling that the success of these courses is at least as important as reading honors these or doing research for a new book.

In addition, there are a number of suggestions for improving or expanding the General Education program. The most obvious solution would be to impose a one or two year core program in the humanities and social sciences. Such a program might have greater impact if part of it were given in the last two years of college rather than the first two.

In the absence of such a radical recommendation as a core program, the Committee could suggest a number of ways to bolster the present program. It should, for example, make a final decision as to whether nat sci courses should teach the history of science, the logic of science, or science itself--or some combination of the three--and might well conclude that to gain an elementary knowledge of science students should take a two year rather than a one-year course.

Natural sciences concentrators could be required to take an elementary nat sci course, on the grounds that such courses are valuable both to the scientist and the non-scientist. Reversing the recommendation of the Bruner Report of 1959, the Committee could also recomment restricting nat sci courses to the classical sciences: chemistry, physics, and biology.

The Committee might apply the same standard to the social sciences, and recommend that lower level soc sci's stick to the traditional fields of history and political theory, eliminating courses like Soc Sci 8. In order to toughen the soc sci requirement, the Committee could suggest that courses teach more about the social sciences as a discipline; this would be done not by teaching methodology but by approaching historical and social problems from the standpoint of theory.

Instead of throwing out a straight history course like Soc Sci 1, students could be required to take an upper level soc sci which deals more substantially with social and historical problems, as well as a lower level course.

As part of the humanities program, the Committee might advocate a tougher language requirement: students should take at least one half course in the literature of a foreign language, on the grounds that a general education should include more extensive knowledge of a foreign language, on the grounds that a general education should include more extensive knowledge of a foreign language than is now called for.

The Committee should also discuss the Sophomore Standing Program, which at present is clearly inconsistent with the concept of general education and which conceivably could be abolished if the Gen Ed program were expanded. An alternative would be to have advanced standing sophomores take the full complement of Gen Ed courses while reducing their concentration requirements.

These are only a few of the proposals worth considering; there are dozens of others, and the Committee should discuss them all. It should not be afraid of unorthodox conclusions, indeed it should welcome them. For the survival of a general education program depends not only on the ability to effect certain changes, but also on the necessity of attracting definite Faculty support. Only if the Committee's report provokes serious discussion among the Faculty and College as a whole will a strong general education proram become a reality; on an issue as significant as the future of undergraduate education at Harvard such discussion is essential.