Scientists Benefit In Medical School Curriculum Change

The Medical School faculty made its inevitable move on curriculum Thursday, dumping an innovative five-year-old system and retrenching to a program that promises to re-establish the importance of the basic sciences at the school.

The faculty got rid of its "core curriculum," the one-and-a-half year program in the basic sciences that allowed clinical staff to teach alongside of basic sciences instructors. The plan that replaces it will, beginning in September, return teaching to the basic science departments, and will probably mean much more rigorous pre-clinical training.

Robert S. Blacklow '55, associate dean for academic programs, said yesterday that by replacing the core curriculum, the faculty sought to allow students the "flexibility" that he said the core had promised but not delivered.

But the rationale for the faculty decision is much deeper. Student performance on the National Boards, tests that are supposed to assess achievement in the basic sciences, has dropped from what was uniformly top status for Harvard before the advent of the core.

In 1970, for instance, Harvard fell in overall rating from first in the nation to third, and standings in Pharmacology and Pathology fell to 15th and 10th place respectively.

The only department that did not yield instruction of its own discipline to clinicians from outside the department was Biological Chemistry. And the student scores in Biochemistry did not fall from first place.

However, Harvard academics were concerned about more than prestige as measured by the National Boards. The basic sciences departments had seen their courses wrested from their control when the core was implemented, and last Thursday they regained control.

One first-year student, who wished to remain unidentified, said yesterday, "The faculty cares about prestige but also its position. The basic scientists were feeling pretty superfluous; the teachers were clinicians."

The student added, "A lot of people think we're not working hard enough now. They really want more people to follow their footsteps into basic science academia."

Another first-year student who also preferred to remain anonymous, explained, "The basic research scientist has built the Harvard Medical School."

Dr. Bernard D. Davis, Jackson Professor of Bacterial Physiology, wrote in a September issue of Science magazine that the core curriculum shortchanged "the student with intellect."

The return to a curriculum where departments teach their courses will allow the departments to "do anything they want and teach a brutal bunch of shit," the student said.

He said that under the program, instructors will continually repeat material, in an effort to make the students learn. Under the core curriculum, he said, students were taught a fact only once.

Dr. Alexander Leaf, Jackson Professor of Clinical Medicine, pioneered the core curriculum and warned in September that with a return to departmental teaching, "Medical School will become four years stuffed full of didactic exercises.