House Courses

Winthrop House's new Soc Sci course, if approved by the Committee on General Education, will become the second course in the University to be given by a House, for the House's residents. Along with Nat Sci 1, which began meeting in Winthrop this Fall, the course may represent the first limited steps toward a new variety of educational experience at Harvard, combining the informality of a seminar with the academic discipline of a course for credit. There is yet little basis for evaluating the idea of House courses as either a curse or a blessing, but the experiment is appealing for a number of reasons.

The new courses appear to be a good thing from the vantage point of University Hall and the office of Edward T. Wilcox, director of General Education. As Wilcox interprets it, the Faculty's mandate in creating a new Gen Ed plan was to multiply the paths an undergraduate could choose in fulfilling his Gen Ed requirement. Rather than channelling the entire College through a few large courses, the new plan aims at allowing the student to tailor his General Education program according to his personal needs and interests.

With this ideal of diversity in mind, any course which the Committee judges appropriate to General Education is an asset, because it increases the options to the student. Wilcox has pointed out that even small, restricted offerings such as Nat Sci 1 mean a few more openings in the Gen Ed program, and every opening means a new opportunity for someone. Small size may eventually prove an advantage, if professors who fear riding a tiger the size of Hum 2 can be encouraged to launch limited, less time-consuming Gen Ed courses within the Houses.

From the viewpoint of Bruce Chalmers, Master of Winthrop House and chief supporter, of the idea, the House offerings have other advantages. Chalmers (who teaches Nat Sci 1 himself) claims benefits from the courses other than the obvious conveniences of flexible meeting times and easy accessibility between teachers and students. Chalmers envisions the House courses as opening new lines of communication between tutors and students. Through the courses, a student could gain close contact with other members of the House tutorial staff and through them, the kind of extra-departmental advice his regular tutor may be unable to provide.

But Chalmers also sees the House courses as paying dividends in General Education beyond simple diversity; he hopes they can structure and improve the informal general education that a House provides naturally. Chalmers characterizes House general education as a dinner table conversation, "people talking to one another, the interchange of ideas and points of view, even of ignorance." He continues, "We might be able to make this general education more effective by structuring it, and give it more depth, more challenge, by making it a course for credit." Here it seems, is the chief advantage of a House course.

The obvious criticisms of Houses courses can be answered with relative ease. Their small size does not make them inappropriate for General Education, if their subject matter satisfies Gen Ed criteria. Presumably, even departmental offerings could be taught in the Houses. Even if a Master limits the course to House residents, it is pointless to prevent him from offering it to anyone because he is reluctant to offer it to everyone; what is more, Chalmers has said he will not take an inflexible attitude toward admitting non-residents with a special interest in the courses. The courses' small size would not tax facilities available in the Houses. Conceivably, if too many professors gave small courses within the Houses, the supply of men for the larger offerings might be reduced. But until the House courses proliferate enormously, the problem would not arise.

At present, the concept of House courses seems a promising experiment, one that should be undertaken by more Houses than Winthrop alone. The expenditures in space, manpower, and time are relatively small, and the rewards, if Wilcox and Chalmers are at all justified in their hopes, will be well worth the trouble.