This is How the Core Ends

Decades from now, some Crimson columnist may look back on last week as one of the most significant in the history of undergraduate education at Harvard. The Preliminary Report of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Task Force on General Education, released last Wednesday, charts a radically different course from its predecessors. Designed to prepare undergraduates for membership in contemporary global society, the proposed program would discard the Core Curriculum’s once-revolutionary “modes of inquiry” approach, while continuing to require undergraduates to take a prescribed number of courses in a set number of thematic areas. In plain English, it’s a very big deal.

And no one seems to care.

Unlike at other junctures in Harvard’s history, a proposed change in the curriculum has been met with silence, particularly from undergraduates who seem to have tuned the curricular reforms out completely. The lack of engagement is frightening—this campus seems intent on forfeiting its chance to shape Harvard’s future.

It’s unreasonable to lay the blame for the dead air on the majority of undergraduates. Given that the curricular review has droned on for as long as most of us have been enrolled here, the lack of interest is understandable. But neither the duration of the review nor undergraduate apathy can excuse the inactivity of this campus’ leaders, who have made practically no effort to make the proposed reforms relevant for most Harvard students.

Sure, The Crimson covered the report’s release, and Undergraduate Council (UC) representatives were enlisted to distribute copies in their Houses. But without any follow-up activity, the story disappeared from this newspaper’s pages, and the report has languished in unappealing piles in the Houses of the few representatives who actually picked up their copies.

The UC’s other recent offerings have been slim pickings, at best. Last semester, one open forum was organized, but was never followed up. The UC apparently took the reasonably good turnout at the event as a sign of success and moved on. It never occurred to anyone that an ongoing series of engagements with undergraduates might be a good way to keep students involved. In particular cases, some UC members’ inactivity has become negligence; when University Hall staffers distributed copies of the curricular review’s most recent reports in dining halls last spring, fully a third of the UC reps concerned didn’t even bother to show up to help.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1978, as the Core was being readied for Faculty approval, this campus was abuzz with controversy. 2,500 undergraduates signed a petition calling for more student input; a Crimson poll reported that 65 percent of students opposed the plan. Even freshman proctors issued a collective statement against the changes. This newspaper urged students “to engage in organized protest” against the Core, “for the sake of a better Harvard education and for opposing the elitist process used to formulate the proposal.”

Three decades later, we’ve come full circle. A six-member faculty committee produced this latest set of recommendations shrouded in secrecy, and student input was limited to two undergraduates brought in late in the process. Since its release, the draft has had more of an impact on campus paper waste than on students’ thinking, simply because nothing has been done to mobilize student opinion. There has not been another forum, no response from UC leaders, no roundtable discussions. The curricular review may be old news, but these recommendations could well be voted into reality soon. If we don’t have our say now, we will miss our chance to shape the future of Harvard’s undergraduate education.

But why should we be engaged with the curricular review when we are all supposedly likely to have graduated before it comes into existence? For one thing, the implementation of the new curriculum will surely be gradual—because a quarter of Harvard’s undergraduate population changes each year, there can be no single moment to roll out the new program in its entirety. As a consequence, the classes of 2009 and 2010 will likely see their requirements change. Also, if the new curriculum is approved, what to do with the old Core requirements until the new ones are implemented will be an open question. Interim adjustment, reduction, and loosening of Core requirements will certainly affect current undergraduates’ experience. We should be wary of leaving these discussions to octogenarians who haven’t been undergraduates for decades.

More importantly, while the primary stakeholders in the new curriculum have yet to enroll, we have a responsibility as their forebears to inject undergraduate concerns into the discussions that will shape their education here after it affects our own. In the weeks ahead, the UC must start engaging undergraduates in the process of shaping the General Education report. Campus-wide forums and dinnertime discussions in House dining halls attended by the faculty members responsible for the new proposal would be a good start. A short, readable summary and commentary on the report should be drafted by UC leaders and distributed, along with the report itself, in House dining halls and to student group leaders.

If, thanks to inaction on the part of student leaders, undergraduate reaction to last week’s report remains sluggish, the discussion about the future of General Education will continue to be monopolized by faculty. A handful of UC reps, operating with their own political objectives in mind, are a paltry excuse for an undergraduate voice in the process of curricular reform; in the face of our leaders’ passivity, it’s up to the College as a whole to make itself a part of the process. The time is now.

Adam Goldenberg ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.