At Last, a Guiding Philosophy

After four long years, the Curricular Review has finally found its heart. The preliminary report of the Task Force on General Education released this week articulates a comprehensive and compelling vision of what it means to be educated in the 21st century. On the whole, the document advances a sound underpinning philosophy for general education: that all Harvard College graduates should be knowledgeable about the seminal issues that face their generation. Yet members of the Harvard community have voiced concerns about the particulars of the committee’s proposal, most notably the balance of the 10 required fields, which we believe requires further examination.

The report is bold, visionary, and innovative, particularly compared to the last general education report, which conspicuously lacked any fundamental rationale. Whereas the previous report required students to take any three courses in three broad areas, the new report has tremendous focus. It proposes centering a Harvard education on courses that will provide relevant context for a student’s life outside these gates while remaining anchored to the liberal arts.

It does so by featuring broad and interdisciplinary courses that challenge students to put their education in context. For instance, the classics of Western humanities will still be taught, but with an eye towards why certain works have been so influential and how they remain relevant today. Science classes will continue to be required, but the theory they present will be oriented towards understanding our increasingly technical society. This paradigm draws broadly on Harvard’s most successful courses, such as Moral Reasoning 22, “Justice,” Social Studies 10, “Introduction to Social Studies,” and Science B-62, “The Human Mind.”

To implement this philosophy, the report calls for students to take courses in three skill areas—written and oral communication, foreign language, and analytical reasoning. Students would also take seven courses in areas of inquiry and experience—cultural traditions and cultural change, the ethical life, the United States: historical and global perspectives, societies of the world: historical and global perspectives, reason and faith, science and technology: life science, and science and technology: physical science. Both specially designed courses in general education and departmental courses would count towards requirements.

The report’s guiding philosophy is inspiring. At a time when far too many students fulfill requirements by taking courses that seem to address anything but the important issues of our day (courses such as Science B-57, “Dinosaurs and Their Relatives” or Literature and Arts B-48, “Chinese Imaginary Space”), using relevance to “the forces driving national and global change” as a cornerstone for general education courses is fresh and compelling. That’s not to say courses should be paraprofessional or dominated by real world examples; nor is it conceding that traditional approaches to the liberal arts are useless. On the contrary, it situates the liberal arts in the context of the world around us, accentuating just how important they are to our lives and our futures.

We are also encouraged by the broad and integrative nature of the proposal. It recognizes that students need to know more than what they learn in Core courses, which all too often delve deeply into highly specialized and sometimes obscure subjects, in order to be truly educated in today’s world. It works to ensure that no Harvard graduate will be unable to understand and analyze something they read in a newspaper with sufficient depth.

The proposal also recognizes that the real world isn’t defined by departmental lines. Presenting students with material in an interdisciplinary manner that integrates multiple perspectives, ways of thinking, and tools will prepare students both for life after college and for the contemporary academy, in which these departmental lines are fading.

That being said, the specific proposals of the report are far from perfect, and we have several concerns. For starters, we are fearful that this proposal may lead to the second incarnation of the Core. One problem with the Core is that it offers classes that are too narrow. Despite the grandiose language about broad courses in the report, there need to be clear standards to ensure that this is the case in practice.

The Core is also plagued by limited offerings, which force students to take courses that they find uninteresting or that are badly taught. The faculty needs to put faith into the ability of undergraduates to choose what is right. There must be a large enough menu so that a market for courses develops, allowing the pedagogical cream to rise to the top and allowing students to tailor the curriculum to their interests. A good criterion is that no student with a requirement left in their senior year should be pigeonholed into taking something they are not enthusiastic about.

We are also unsure whether the 10 categories specified by the report are the best divisions to fulfill the report’s guiding philosophy. Several criticisms have emerged almost immediately. For instance, it seems troubling that a student could avoid reading any central works of literature or exposing themselves to seminal works of art. Another concern is that students could skimp on exposing themselves to more complex and analytical disciplines like the hard sciences and economics. There is no doubt more criticisms will emerge with further scrutiny. While we are not suggesting that there should be more requirements, the faculty should closely examine the balance of requirements carefully, as we ourselves will in the coming months.

Ultimately, Harvard students must graduate being able to understand the issues that they will spend their lives grappling with as citizens and leaders of the world. There is no doubt that over time the precise set of issues that are most relevant will change, but the framework for education advanced in this review—more than any previous one—accommodates our rapidly changing world. Moreover, it prescribes a curriculum that by definition must keep pace with that change. We hope that this proposal is implemented with a level of flexibility that matches the boldness of its vision and anticipates the need for continued and regular renewal of its animating ideas.