History's Failure On General Exams

THE HISTORY Department recently ended two years of debate on whether to abolish or restructure its general examinations by offering senior concentrators eight precious hours of its senior faculty's time.

The department in one neat announcement reaffirmed its ancient policy that assembles 125 seniors each May for a three hour lest questioning them in a field they have little or no training in: comparative history. At the same time, the department retained its practice of evaluating these general exams as one third of an undergraduate's final standing in the department.

Most disturbingly, the History Department rebuffed the careful, reasoned--if too conciliatory--efforts of its students over the last 10 months to propose an alternative to generals and take an active part in planning their own curriculum.

Ignoring December's near-unanimous polling of History concentrators that called for an end to generals and backed the undergraduate curriculum committee's proposed substitution of three month-long seminars in comparative topics instead, the department offered up a tid bit that is too little, too late; a series of eight, one-hour preparatory lectures by senior faculty members.

The lectures, announced by flat two weeks ago, got under way last Tuesday as Oscar Handlin. Pforzheimer University Professor, fielded questions from 25 seniors on the subject of "Riots" for 40 minutes. They continue tonight at 7:30 p.m. when Donald H. Fleming. Trumbull Professor of American History, similarly "prepares" students for a generals question they will answer in May on "Responses to Science and Technology." The eight hours clearly are not enough. Since the department's 1973 generals fiasco--when seven students failed both the written and oral parts of the examination--the senior faculty has almost certainly spent more time than that just reading undergraduate reform proposals and deciding how to fend them off as "unworkable" or "uneconomical."

Certainly, the History faculty has not been putting much time into preparing students for generals in the classroom. Only three of 66 half-courses offered to undergraduates this year cover comparative-type topics.

The failure of the "History Department Seven" two years ago is hardly the exclusive responsibility of the senior faculty. The students revealed a shocking ignorance of their own field and probably deserved not to pass. Yet the fact that History professors are unwilling to teach--either in regular courses or in the students proposed "modules"--a field they require students to learn in their three years in the department, is hardly exculpating.

Apparently the hard line taken by professors Handlin, Bernard Bailyn and David S. Landes against any change in general exams as now constituted has more support than the objections of professors such as Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Patrick L.R. Higonnet '58 and Giles Constable '50 that the senior faculty has a responsibility to take another look at generals and prevent another 1973 from recurring.

But grading people, in general, is a suspect concept, and grading people on generals they haven't been prepared for is even more suspect.

The History department should put up or shut up. It should either require its faculty to teach more comparative history or quit expecting expertise from concentrators in such pursuits.