Re-doing Harvard

Soon after Dean Rosovsky commissioned a review of undergraduate education in 1974, it became clear that the primary impetus for change would come out of two task forces: curriculum and concentrations.

Last week those task forces reported. Their recommendations seem to live up, at least in part, to their advanced billing. If the Faculty passes on their recommendations the College will be a noticeably different place.

The task force on concentrations has reported that it favors opening all limited concentrations, with the condition that the resources allocated to these concentrations must be increased to provide for additional students.

The core curriculum task force's recommendations are much more startling and complicated. The committee suggests major changes for the General Education program including the scrapping of the Natural Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences labels.

In their places the committee suggests a limited group of courses in seven subject areas--mathematics, physics, biology, Western culture, nonwestern civilization, political and moral philosophy and modern social analysis.

The primary motivation for the changes, the task force members assert in the core curriculum report, is to bring the Gen Ed program back into focus.

The program as it is now, with its 42 humanities, 40 Soc Sci and 28 Nat Sci offerings, and the right to substitute two departmental courses for one Gen Ed offering, has strayed far from the original Gen Ed path.

That path, as outlined in "General Education in a Free Society" better known as the Redbook, suggested that every Harvard and Radcliffe student would take the same lower-level Hum course, the same lower level Soc Sci course and one of two lower level Nat Sci offerings.

That plan of action was never actually approved by the Faculty. But a severely limited menu of courses was prescribed. The program has since suffered from considerable erosion.

Although the new suggested distribution requirements, which include eight offerings in each of six areas and 12 offerings in culture, would not bring things back to the '40s, the program would be much more restricted than in recent years.

The task force reports, as task force chairmen James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government (core curriculum) and Paul C. Martin '52, professor of Physics (concentrations) insist, are strictly recommendations that will be debated and revised before ever hitting the Faculty floor.

But members of the Faculty contacted this week indicated that although there may be disagreement over the specific recommendations of the task forces, many Faculty members perceive the need for change.