De-Generalizing Gen Ed

After months of delays and an unheralded initial report, the General Education Committee of the Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR) is heading back to the drawing board. There are many models they could use—a completely free curriculum like Brown, a great books program à la Columbia, or a system of several large divisions from which students must sample courses like at Yale. But Harvard is not a clone of any other institution and should not adopt some other school’s system. Instead of looking outward, the committee should look at which courses work best here and build from those examples.

It’s clear that the Core Curriculum needs to be replaced. On this page and in University Hall, the Core and its “approaches to knowledge” philosophy have been maligned for not providing enough concrete knowledge. A system where students can fulfill one history requirement by taking a course on 15 years of Cuban history may be great for cocktail parties, but it is hard to see how seven courses in the Core Curriculum could form the foundation of what we believe should be the best program of studies in the world. A higher education should provide basic literacy across a wide spectrum of subjects—a Harvard graduate should be able to pick up a newspaper and understand and analyze any topic in appropriate depth.

The committee was charged with the Herculean task of redefining what it means to be educated in a new millennium. After extensive work, its report was lackluster at best. It identified a general education philosophy composed of four rather ambiguous pillars: knowledge, self-development, citizenship, and achievement. To that end, it proposed requiring three courses in three general areas: the Sciences and Technology, the Humanities and the Arts, and the Study of Societies. A student would have to take a “Harvard College Course” (HCC)—some sort of interdisciplinary survey course—in the two areas opposite his or her concentration. However, the report lacked vision and never clearly defined what an HCC would be, leaving a mish-mash of unclear goals in its wake.

It seems unlikely that anything will change a second time around; there are too many competing interests, departments, and priorities for an entirely new concept of a general education or even an HCC to be created from scratch.

So instead of convening more committees, the Faculty and the administration should look at what types of classes already work best. There is no tried-and-true rule for what these classes look like, but for the most part they are broadly based, foundational courses that mix approaches to knowledge with important theories and their applications.

Clear examples of these types of courses are Moral Reasoning 22: “Justice,” Science B-62: “The Human Mind,” and Historical Study A-12: “International Conflict and Cooperation in the Modern World.” In “Justice,” students read the works of a variety of philosophers and then apply these theories to modern day controversies and debates. “The Human Mind” introduces students to the main theories of psychology and then delves into some of the more interesting problems and controversies about human action, taking students through basic genetics, biology, and neuroscience along the way. Historical Study A-12 mixes political history with theory, using each component to complement the other through case studies. All three of these courses are highly regarded by students for both the knowledge and the analytic tools that they teach.

Our vision for an HCC is based on examples like these. An HCC should include three main components. First, they should contain a historical component to acquaint students with the contexts behind the ideas presented in the course. Second, HCCs must include a theoretical component aimed at teaching students about the important ideas that shaped the subject matter. Ideally, this would involve reading selections from the great thinkers in each field. Through these theories, students would learn different analytic approaches to knowledge, much like they do in the present Core Curriculum. Finally, an HCC should have a practical or experimental component where theory is applied to case studies (in lectures as well as in sections), allowing students to put the theories and analytical tools into practice. An interesting add-on might be to devote the last few weeks of section to the in depth analysis of a different example or problem.

Done right, these HCCs could be tremendous draws. But it will be important to insulate them, at least initially, from competition with departmental courses (many of which should also fulfill gen ed requirements). While we support giving individual departments power over which courses will count for gen-ed credit, we also believe that students should take at least one HCC in their two required areas. Ideally, these courses would be so intellectually stimulating that students would want to take more than just the bare minimum.

Its efforts stalled by a tangled web of earnest, academic motivations, what the Gen Ed Committee needs right now is some inspiration. Often, the toughest theoretical problems can be solved with one concrete example. We can name at least three. These courses succeed in meshing approaches to knowledge and core knowledge, and in educating students about the historical, theoretical, and experimental aspects of their topics. Gen ed classes will never fulfill everyone’s expectations to the fullest. But by following the examples of a handful of model courses, both the minutiae of gen ed syllabi and the broad guiding principles of general education itself might actually satisfy those of a few.