DISSENTING OPINION: The Core of Gen-Ed

There should be no delusions about the Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR). Its suggested implementation of distribution requirements merely expands “student choice”—to use the most favorable name for what really is a vile concept—to the disadvantage of the academy’s mission to guide and educate its students.

In place of the Core, which is an arbitrarily constricted group of mostly obscure offerings, the HCCR suggests that undergrads be set loose upon academic departments, where their options will become even more obscure. It seems exceedingly likely that many Core courses will simply be incorporated into academic departments. Thus Quantitative Reasoning 28, “The Magic of Numbers,” will become “Mathematics 01,” and the only thing that will change about admittedly lackluster courses is their name.

The one potential saving grace for general education is the HCCR’s envisioning of year-long Courses in General Education (CGEs), which are meant as introductions to a particular field. Yet because the HCCR has been manhandled, it remains unclear, or at least not public, what exactly these courses will look like (interdisciplinary or single-subject?) and how they will be taught (with a focus on small sections or on huge lecture courses?). Indeed, it is telling of the process’s incompleteness that the etymology was just hammered out this past summer, in secret, under the supervision of a “Gang of Five” senior Faculty members.

The recommendations of the HCCR cannot faithfully be implemented until CGE’s are fully formed and ready to deploy. To hasten this process, the “Gang of Five,” or whoever chooses to be in charge, can begin by making CGE’s unambiguously central to general education. In a pedagogy which celebrates student choice, this means they must be incentivized. If students take a year-long CGE, it should count for a full distribution requirement—the equivalent of three courses, not just two. Students won’t really be cheating the system, because, ideally, CGEs will also be difficult and competitive, just as Expository Writing and Social Studies 10 are—with frequent assignments and lengthy reading lists. They should be well taught, featuring well spoken, well known faculty members and extensive section meetings—taught, perhaps, using the method many departmental tutorials use.

When all is said and done, CGEs may one day become an admired feature of Harvard’s undergraduate education. But before that can happen, the HCCR needs confident leaders to take the helm and demand that the HCCR—including CGEs—be solidly finished before it is implemented. Better to wait for the Class of 2011 and make a clean break with the Core than attempt a major change in the curriculum without finalizing the centerpiece courses of Harvard’s new general education philosophy.

Mark A. Adomanis ’07 is a government concentrator in Eliot House. Adam Goldenberg ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. Travis K. Kavulla ’06 is a history concentrator in Mather House. All of the writers are Crimson editorial editors.