Medical Faculty Continues Debate; Curriculum Changes Seem Probable

A proposal to completely overhaul medical education at Harvard will probably be approved by the Med School faculty.

At an unusually well-attended meeting yesterday, the faculty resumed its debate on a report which urges the first major reform of the Med School curriculum in more than half a century. The consensus seemed to favor changes along the lines recommended by the report.

Prepared last year by a special subcommittee, the report calls for streamlining the curriculum to allow students more time for elective courses. The subcommittee also asks for more interdepartmental teaching, and for reduced emphasis on the lecture as a method of instruction.

Much Support

The reform proposal appears to have a great deal of support in the clinical half of the Med School. Of the School's four professors of Medicine (each the head of one of the four teaching hospitals), three have come out strongly for the report, and one is still uncommitted. The position of Surgery remains somewhat unclear, although the head of Surgery at one of the four hospitals opposed the report at yesterday's meeting.

In the pre-clinical area opinion seems more divided. The Departments of Physiology and Biochemistry will probably support the subcommittee's report, but spokesmen for Anatomy and Pathology have already indicated that they have serious reservations about the wisdom of reform.

On several issues, however, the faculty appears to be in almost complete agreement. Most speakers yesterday objected to the number of lectures which students must attend. One faculty member pointed out that second-year students have three lectures and two labs almost every day of the week.

A number of speakers blamed this, as well as the rigidity of the curriculum, for taking the flair out of the "dazzling" students who enter the Med School. Another speaker argued that even more of the graduates would be dull and prosaic if they had not been bright enough to withstand the stultifying experience of the Med School's present course of study.

But while most faculty members agreed that the curriculum is now too rigid, several said that they feared any changes.

One speaker cited three minor curriculum reforms in the last ten years and said that none of them had worked out as originally intended because they were based on incorrect premises or because they were not properly implemented.