Faculty To Discuss Gen Ed Report

Six weeks after its release, the Preliminary Report on General Education will meet its critics today as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences gathers to discuss the recommendations for the first time.

“It’s hard to know what to expect on Tuesday,” Alison Simmons, one of the report’s authors and Head Tutor of philosophy department, wrote in an e-mail over the weekend. “We have talked to many colleagues, but there are many more whom we have not yet had the chance to hear from.”

With Interim President Derek C. Bok and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles intent on completing the College’s first curricular review in more than 30 years, the Task Force on General Education—headed by Simmons and Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand—convened over the summer and completed its 38-page report this October.

In contrast to the current Core Curriculum, which emphasizes approaches to academic inquiry, the proposed program connects liberal education to life outside Harvard.

“The ambition of the program of general education,” the report reads, “... is to enable undergraduates to put all the learning they are doing at Harvard, outside as well as inside the classroom, in the context of the people they will be and the lives they will lead after college.”

The report recommends that students complete one half-course in each of seven areas: “Cultural Traditions and Cultural Change,” “The Ethical Life,” “The United States,” “Societies of the World,” “Reason and Faith,” “Life Sciences” and “Physical Sciences.”

Those responsible for shepherding the report stress that it remains a work in progress.

According to two members of the docket committee that determines the agenda of faculty meetings—University Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Judith L. Ryan, Weary professor of German and comparative literature—the task force is prepared to revise the draft between today’s meetings and the next full faculty meeting, on Dec. 12.

Professors from various disciplines have begun to make suggestions for revision. In the Economics Department, according to Chair and Professor James H. Stock, faculty members believe the report overlooks the importance of their field in general education,

In place of structured requirements, Stock said, he would prefer to see distribution requirements or even no requirements at all.

“I trust Harvard students to make good decisions, and I think we should give them the freedom to do so,” he said.

Professor of German Peter J. Burgard said he found the “Reason and Faith” requirement “less appropriate for a general education curricular” than the current “Moral Reasoning” requirement.

“My general impression of the proposal,” Burgard concluded in an e-mail statement, “is that—not in all the general education courses it would include and encourage, but in its principles and rationale—it is anti-academic, even anti-intellectual.”

Aware of these criticisms, Simmons said, she looks forward to the review process. “We’re very eager for faculty not only to share their thoughts with us, but also with each other,” she said. “Any change in the curriculum must be a change that the faculty as a whole can stand behind.”

—Staff writer Johannah S. Cornblatt can be reached at jcornbl@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Samuel P. Jacobs can be reached at jacobs@fas.harvard.edu.