Filling Up the Core

Harvard's vaunted core could use some Great Books.

Like the majority of students in The Crimson's poll last week, I'm frustrated with the core curriculum. You know it, I know it and the American people know it: the core today is incoherent.

It's time we called on the core program to give us what we want: an optional track within the core that has the Great Books at its heart, the survey of Western Civilization as its soul.

For those of you who are bitter and outraged that the Fine Arts department cut its surveys of Western art, you must stretch the scope of this outrage across the entire range of undergraduate education.

What underlies this radical desire? Plain common sense. Let's face it, most students come to Harvard without a clear idea of what constitutes a liberal education. A little guidance couldn't hurt. What we want--and there's no reason to be ashamed--is the option to buy a six-track greatest hits collection of Western Civ.

One can easily imagine what a canon track would look like: a survey of the ancients and medievals including the early Greeks and readings of Plato and Aristotle, followed by a short stay in the Rome of Augustus, moving on to a study of the Hebrew and Christian Bible, and then, a look at the works of Augustine, Aquinas and Maimonides. This would comprise the first two courses in this six-track cassette.

To follow this, we need a two-semester class that moves to the modern period--something like a diluted English 10 combined with Government 1061. Doubtless, we'd have to include Dostoevsky, Balzac, Goethe and the Americans: Jefferson. Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and DuBois. Perhaps, selections from Smith and Freud too.

The third part of the canon track would be a survey of Western art and music, primarily in the Renaissance and after, thus blending the fine arts surveys with some of the clapping for credit courses in Literature and Arts B.

How should these courses be taught? I've no ideas on teaching art, but I'm sure others do. But with respect to the book-based courses, they should be tutorials taught by competent and broadly educated grad students, meeting once a week for two hours, with eight three to six page papers each semester (no exams ) and two supplementary lectures a week, provided by professors. The course would continue through reading period and a larger paper might replace one or two smaller papers, by teaching and reading these books closely and in small groups with supplementary lectures, we might actually begin to achieve cultural literacy.

I know this imperfect plan needs some corrections and I hope this spurs some thought on what liberal education is. But, students would take this track fully informed that this is only an introduction and by no means comprehensive. Students would knowingly give up some of their social lives and their fingers might numb from writing up to 50 pages per semester (with rewrites, of course). These six courses would exempt students from Lit and Arts, Moral Reasoning and perhaps two electives or two non-science cores.

Upon leaving Harvard, many seniors feel pushed out to join the "company of educated men and women." But the so-called "approaches to knowledge" which Dean Rosovsky gave us is only good for those who want to dabble and pick. Notwithstanding this minority, no good reason against an optional six-course humanities track within the Core exists.

All that's required is a little courage and effort. Daring souls await....

Dan Markel's column appears on alternate Wednesdays.