Give A Boost To Ailing Core

Harvard, it seemed, breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was announced last semester by Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles that the ineffective and stagnant Core program would finally be examined. But months later, it appears that we may be disappointed. Quite simply, Core reform is not shaping up to be the substantive overhaul that is needed to properly educate Harvard undergraduates.

The Core suffers from flaws both academic and administrative. Most importantly, the Core fails to fulfill its dichotomous mission (as described in Courses of Instruction), which is to ensure that students are "broadly educated" and to teach them "approaches to knowledge in areas that the faculty considers indispensable to undergraduate education." These goals are sabotaged by several factors, which include limited offerings, a myopic focus on "micro-events," and a general insistence on the part of the Core office to professors that they "dumb down" classes.

The rigidity of the Standing Committe on the Core Program only exacerbates the situation. The SCCP-- the Core's governing body--has essentially refused to administer any type of academic booster shot to the ailing program. For instance, it rejected a proposal last year which would have added the European survey classes History 10a and 10b to the Historical Study Core area. These classes, which provide a considerable breadth of knowledge as well as a solid introduction to the methods of historical study, were turned down for the most peevish of reasons: they didn't precisely fit the description of Historical Studies A or B.

The Core suffers from other beaurocratic inflexibilities. For instance, several weeks ago psychology concentrators who needed Science B-29: "Human Behavioral Biology" to fill departmental requirements were lotteried out in favor of those who needed the class to fill a Core requirement. The situation was eventually resolved, but only after much confusion and hair-pulling. At times, the SCCP seems more intent on perpetuating its own existence than on providing an effective Core program. Conservatism is a bad trait for educators to harbor.

Dislike of the Core is strong enough to have sparked grass-roots action among undergraduates. A small group of students has signed roughly 2,600 of Harvard's 6,500 students to a petition calling for departmental bypasses in the Core, and the list of names is still growing.

Fortunately, the Core Review Committee, which was established by Knowles to evaluate the Core and report to the SCCP, seems to be moving in this direction. However, we feel that it is not moving far enough. According to Patricia Larash '97, one of the two student members of the eight-person committee, the end result of the year-long examination may be no more than "a less monolithic core more amenable to departmental bypasses." This is unacceptable for several reasons.

First, this solution does nothing to ensure that students will be able to take full advantage of departmental offerings, because the SCCP will still have control over which courses are accepted for Core credit. Their rejection of History 10a and 10b doesn't exactly fill us with confidence. In essence, this solution will do nothing more than slightly enlarge the offerings of the Core. This would be a welcome addition, but hardly the paradigm shift we need. A similar solution might be to allow students to petition on an individual basis for any departmental class they wish, but this would create a bureaucratic nightmare.

Quite simply, the only truly effective solution would be to expand Core offerings by allowing students to count departmental classes in place of Core classes. The superior nature of departmental classes would ensure that students actually attain the educational goals of the core, and would do away with the headaches and stagnation that have resulted from the existence of the SCCP, which acts like a lead weight on the progress of Harvard's curriculum. We hope that meaningful Core reform will be implemented without much more delay.