As the 'Great Debate' Resumes...

Last week, in a candid nine-page pamphlet, twenty-two members of the Faculty, led by Professor Giles Constable, released an "Alternate Proposal" to the Doty Committee Report on General Education. In the nine pages, the professors do what the Doty Committee, after more than a year of deliberation, failed to do: They ask most of the proper questions and outline most of the plausible answers. In addition, the pamphlet promises to inject into the center of today's Faculty debate a concern for two issues that have too long remained on the periphery of discussion: the need for small group teaching and the inadequacy of Harvard's advising system.

A Major Failing

But, if the group clearly poses most of the disputed questions, it follows the Doty Committee in ignoring the central one: What is a General Education course? Without answering this question, it is impossible to justify philosophically any particular system of General Education. The Constable group does not even pretend to justify its administrative suggestions on any grounds other than convenience: "Our proposals add up to a somewhat simplified and liberalized version of the present plan." The proposal advocates a four course General Education requirement simply because "the existing program ... in practice adds up to no more than four courses."

Failing to define a General Education course, the Proposal cannot properly distinguish between such a course and a departmental course. Though the report acknowledges, in passing, that General Education courses "are more frequently broad and self-contained than departmental courses," the mechanics of the proposed program system permit the canny and uninterested student to bypass completely the demands, and rewards, of the General Education program. This represents "liberalization" at its worst.

A Major Advantage

But the Proposal also exhibits "liberalization" at its best. For it allows the sincere and imaginative student to construct his own "special General Education program." Both in the text of the report, and in logic, this provision is separate from the clause permitting all students to substitute, haphazardly, departmental for General Education courses. The "special program" idea is a sound one for four reasons:

* It encourages the student with advanced placement or standing to view General Education as a unique opportunity rather than as an onerous or childish obstacle.

* It suggests the possibility of integrating independent study and advanced seminars into the General Education sequences of capable students. In this way, the "special program" idea reflects the report's recognition that the chief problem with the present system is one of teaching, not of curriculum.

* It permits extensive experimentation without committing the entire College to each experiment.

* It adds a new dimension to the concept of general education, for the very process of devising a special program is itself educational.

More Advisors Needed

Admittedly, the "special program" concept assumes that students will know what a good General Education program is, a rather curious assumption in view of the Faculty's confusion on this point. But the Constable group recognizes this flaw and offers the only possible remedy for it: the provision of close and knowledgeable advisors for each student, beyond his Freshman year and outside his field of concentration.

The report touches but lightly on the need for more advisors. Hopefully the Faculty will air the issue thoroughly and consider the many possible ways of filling this need. For example, could not a new advising system and the "special program" concept be fused with the House system? House tutors and associates could organize seminars and independent study courses that would simultaneously fulfill General Education requirements and provide the kind of guidance advocated in the Proposal. Such a development would reinvigorate the House intellectually and provide an institutional counterweight to the growing influence of the departments.

An Immediate Counterweight

Such reforms are far in the future. A counterweight to departmental power is needed immediately, and the Proposal outlines a simple but ingenious one. The Constable group suggests division of the General Education Committee into subcommittees for the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. Over the present Committee, such sub-committees would have an important advantage in bargaining with a department for teaching time and money. They would know better the peculiarities and problems of the department and would command far more respect as professional equals.

The Alternate Proposal has clarified the old issues and has brought forward many neglected and significant ones. But, as it stands, the report should not be passed by the Faculty. For its primary value lies not in the few concrete answers it gives, but in the many imaginative questions it asks.