A Problem at Harvard's Core

Harvard's place as America's preeminent institution of higher learning is in jeopardy, and the problem lies at the University's core.

Last April, The Crimson reported on the flaws of Harvard's core curriculum: bored students in overcrowded and undersupplied sections, given inflated grades by undertrained, undermotivated teaching fellows. These sections supplement watered-down lectures by a growing roster of professors, who are frequently confused about how to teach "approaches to knowledge" in their narrow fields of specialization.

As an alumnus, this situation bothers me, especially because I know, firsthand, that it wasn't always this way.

When I graduated from Harvard College, nearly 40 years ago, my classmates and I were required to develop a firm grounding in Western Civilization, as part of the General Education program. Since then, I have been indebted to Harvard for the sense of chronology, context, proportion and priority I gained from that experience.

I was one of the lucky ones. My successors were less fortunate. Little more than a decade after I received my diploma, a series of changes and reforms rendered the General Education program less and less effective, ultimately leading to today's dilemma.

A brief review of history is helpful to understand how Harvard has gotten lost on the way to providing undergraduate education. Under President Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, Harvard's curriculum changed from historic humanistic breadth to an elective system of instruction. Fields of concentration and distribution requirements were started in the era of President A. Lawrence Lowell. Next came President James Bryant Conant '14, who implemented the General Education program.

My Harvard Class of 1955 was the first for which General Education was required. From 13 options, we chose one introductory course in each of three fields--the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Collectively, the courses gave us a strong foundation in the study of Western Civilization.

Unfortunately, the General Education program developed some of the same flaws that now plague the core. The original 13 courses devolved into a lengthy list of professors' specialized offerings, diluting the original intent. By 1969, the program had expanded to more than 100 courses.

In 1974, the administration of President Derek C. Bok sought to reform the General Education program. Bok turned the task of creating a new "core" curriculum over to then-Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovaky. But Rosovsky--seeking to avoid controversy in deciding what subjects should be included in the new program--developed a proposal without specifics, one that pinpointed ways of thinking rather than content, form rather than substance.

Following several years of discussion, the Faculty approved the core in 1978. As reported by Associate Dean of the Faculty Phyllis Keller in her 1982 book, Getting to the Core, Rosovsky discouraged efforts to include a course category entitled "Great Traditions of Western Thought." What resulted as the core was a 10-part compromise that placed cognitive development over substantive learning.

It wasn't long before objective observers began to realize that what Rosovsky had legislated was an educational blunder that far overshadowed the ultimate misfortune of General Education. The core quickly disintegrated into the same kind of "rifle shot" narrow courses within broad fields of learning that ruined General Education.

To this day, there appears to be no end to core course proliferation. The 1994-95 "Courses of Instruction" book includes well over 150 Core courses, including more than a dozen new entries. New courses include such relatively obscure topics as those of Literature and Arts C-16, "Rebirth and Karma in Indian Literature and Ritual." Many core courses could be worthwhile evening lectures or even field of concentration courses; few provide the survey of fundamental knowledge normally associated with a core.

In spite of initial positive exposure from the national media and endorsement by educational professionals, by the early 1980s there was substantial angst within the Harvard community regarding the core's teaching methods and curriculum.. Campus dissatisfaction received national scrutiny when, in 1985, then-Secretary of Education William Bennett attacked the core, saying, "The core is designed not to teach any select body of knowledge, but to introduce presumably eager undergraduates to different 'modes of inquiry'.... Thus after four years, hopefully you will be able to flip a mental switch and think like a historian or an economist or a scientist. And you'd better be able to because the core won't give you a coherent picture about Western history, scientific advances, or philosophical though." A Harvardian himself, Bennett was one of many skeptics.

In The National College Guide: America's Top Liberal Arts Colleges, published in 1991 and revised in 1993, Harvard was not included, due to the core's deficiencies. And in September, 1990, Caleb Nelson '88 wrote of Harvard's Core curriculum in The Atlantic, "The Core curriculum illustrates the futility of trying to teach students to think like scientists, for instance, without bothering to teach them much science."

Harvard is not alone among Ivy League colleges criticized for failing to provide a cohesive body of traditional knowledge as a Core program. Yale, for example, has no core curriculum and relatively unstructured distribution requirements. But Yale is building a reputation as a center for Western Civilization study. In 1991, Yale graduate Lee M. Boss pledged $20 million to his alma mater, stating that "the study of Western Civilization is essential to developing students' understanding of the ideas that have shaped America."

Still, many fine schools do provide a traditional liberal arts background emphasizing Western Civilization, and others incorporate a "world" orientation. In Massachusetts, Boston University has had a nationally respected core program since 1989, created after five years of faculty consideration, and the Tufts faculty inaugurated its World Civilization program in 1992. Many other schools are providing excellent core programs. I have visited a number of these. My first and perhaps most memorable such experience was to attend Harvard-trained Hardy Hansen's "The Classical Origins of Western Culture" class at Brooklyn College in 1991. When Lynne Cheney, then-chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, released her landmark 1989 booklet "50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students," the Brooklyn program was cited as exemplary.

Catholic colleges and universities across the country are offering core curriculums in the best liberal arts tradition. At Manhattan College in Riverdale, N.Y., I attended Dr. Thomas J. Smith's required course "Classic Origins of Western Culture" in 1993. The topic of the day was the Tale of the Trojan Horse from Virgil's Aeneid.

In light of core liberal arts programs at these among many other colleges, Harvard's failure to provide a meaningful core is indefensible.

But there is reason for optimism. Professor of History James Hankins, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History Steven Ozment, Goelet Professor of French History Patrice Higonnet '58, and Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies Charles S. Maier '60, appear to have adaptations of History 10 ("Western Societies, Politics, and Cultures") headed into the core for 1995-96. As Ozment notes, "The distinctive feature of a liberal education has traditionally been the acquisition of a deep sense of precedent, so the goal has been to give students a long perspective on the world they live in."

William Bennett writes that "a good college will separate the great texts and the important ideas from the run-of-the-mill and offer the best to its students and that offering will be the institution's vision of a truly educated person."

Without a meaningful core, Harvard no longer offers the best to its students, leaving them to identify quality liberal arts courses for themselves. Although relevant knowledge does not remain wholly static, some fundamentals endure and are worth passing on.

Harvard's fundamental liberal arts program has strayed from its glory days, when it required students to study the values that are the foundation of our culture, while maintaining high academic standards. Harvard's administration must return to the drawing board to develop a core liberal arts program that is worthy of the Harvard name.

William H. Chrisman '55 is a property tax consultant in Phoenix, AZ. At Harvard, he concentrated in Economics.