Right premise, wrong recommendation

GENERAL EDUCATION at Harvard is in shambles. The original definition of the program, taken from the Harvard Redbook--"that part of education which should be common to everone--in particular, the goals should be effective thinking, communication, the making of relevant judgments and the discrimination of values"-has been lost under a pile of lower and higher level courses, confusing guidelines, and contradictory rules. General Education was supposed to be translated into a specific as "The Scandinavian Cinema" and "Technology, War and Peace") now fulfill Gen Ed requirements. One course in Scandinavian films now equals two Fine Arts offerings in satisfying a Gen Ed requirement in Humanities.

The erosion of the General Education program has not been orderly. But there are intelligent and valid reasons for why such a distortion has taken place. First, Faculty members have never shown a wide-spread willingness to teach the type of basic introductory courses the General Education program originally envisioned. Second, students have consistently pressured administrators to offer a program of free choice. They have shown a stubborn resistance to requirements that run counter to their academic interests. If anything, the program now is a vivid demonstration that students favor a freely elective system that gives them the option to choose as many of their 32 electives as possible.

James Q. Wilson and his task force on core curriculum started with the premise that General Education needs to be changed. But the task force has arrived at a conclusion that stands greatly at increasing liberalization. Instead of recommending that the now relatively meaningless requirements be scrapped in favor of a system that would advise students to take courses deemed worthy of a General Education, it has suggested that a series of restrictions be imposed that would force students to take a limited number of offerings in seven fields.

The task force specifies required half courses in the following areas: mathematics, physics, biology, non-western culture, political and moral philosophy and modern social analysis, and a full course or two related half courses in western culture. Students would be allowed to place out of these courses by scoring above a certain level on a standardized test. Students would still have to take expository writing, but they would have to write a paper during freshman week to enable instructors to place them in the proper expository writing course. Exceptional students could place out. Students who wrote that first essy poorly would have to take a remedial course in the fall and then a regula expository writing course in the spring. The task force also recommends that the foreign language requirement be dropped.

The task force defends its decision to return to complaints of confusion with the current system. The task force claims that students need requrements to insure that they are exposed to certain important intellectual skills that they would not take otherwise. But I would argue that most students who get into Harvard have the insight to recognize what courses will contribute to their own growth. Students that do not have this insight can be pointed in that direction through counseling. They need not be bludgeoned into taking these offerings.

THE BEST WAY of encouraging students to take courses is to make the best teaching faculty members design and teach them. There is an historical example of how well this type of course can work: John Finley's Hum 103. "The Great Age of Athens." It was not the Hum requirement that made so many students enroll in this course. It was Finley's ability to interest students in the material. If the Faculty feels biology and physics courses are important, then it should present some attractive introductory courses in these fields--ones that would remain free from pre-med competition. Admittedly, not all the students that the task force would like to see in these courses will enroll. But students rarely learn from courses that they do not want to take. A required half course in physics is wasted on someone determined not to take interest in the subject matter.

If the Faculty adopts the logic of the task force report and insists on imposing required courses, the suggested courses in the report should be rethought. The core curriculum task force would have done well to understand that there are many students who are thrilled to leave the sciences behind them in high school. These students will do anything to avoid the rigorous type of science courses that the task force recommends. Unless Wilson also intends to be the policeman for these offerings, it will not take students long to spot the least scientific offering and flood it. Such a path seems inevitable. The task force's answer to students who want to avoid rigorous science is that they should apply elsewhere. In some schools a core requirement could have that effect. But few students will allow a few requirements to dissuade them from applying to Harvard. Instead they will try to think of ways to get around them.

THE TASK FORCE attempts to reconcile the loss of free choice by letting students place out of courses through taking examinations. But that recommendation has potentially dubious ramifications. One exciting thing about coming to Harvard is that, even if you have had schooling that would by some standards seem infrior, once you arrive here that past can be forgoten. The untracked curruculum makes for a strong measue of equality. That equality enables students to rid themselves of insecurities and potentially crushing inferiority complexes. Under a placing-out plan, students would in effects be told that they are smarter or dumber, more or less disadvantaged than others. The psychological damage of such divisins would carry a much greater impact than the relatively monor intellectual gains that students can attain in the few half courses they would be forced to take.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment with the task force report is the time it devotes to devising ways to make the requirements stick. It takes much too little stock of the other reason for the current state of the General Education program: the faculty's lack of interest in staffing such a program.

The task force should have suggested concrete incentives or requirements to get Faculty members involved in these programs. Requiring students to take what the task force wants is an easy and potentially damaging way of placing the onus of Gen Ed on student shoulders. To quote the dissent of task force member Robert V. Pound, Malinckrodt Professor of Physics.

Courses legislated into existence without standing the test of the "marketplace" ae not likely to please either the students or the staff. A course evolved from the special interstst and achievements of its designer is far more likely to succeed than one designed by committee. The effect on their enthusiasm and spirit of working through courses the students find unusually dull or distasteful is distinctly negative and damaging to other parts of their careers.

The Faculty should commit some of the College's resources to getting committed and popular Faculty members to put together interesting courses under a Gen Ed umbrella. Once these professors devote themselves to it, it will be easy for students to see the merits of General Education.