Save it or Scrap it

“The real test of a program of general education is not what it requires of the students, but what it demands of the faculty,” wrote Professor Michael J. Sandel in a January New York Times article on the Harvard curriculum. Articulating the tension between faculty research and undergraduate education in large research universities, Sandel asserted that “general education needs to lean against the specializing tendencies of departments and disciplines.”

This seems to be a pretty obvious tenet for general education, but you’d be hard pressed to find this view articulated in the pages of the final report of the Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR). The burden of this ongoing curricular review lies on the shoulders of the Faculty, whose enthusiasm and care for research and education must outlast the students who cycle in and out of this College in rapid succession. But why would Sandel, a leading member of the HCCR’s Committee on General Education, articulate this now, three years after the review’s inception, and in the education life supplement of The New York Times?

Now that University President Lawrence H. Summers is on his way out, one would hope that the secret meetings to determine the course of the curricular review and to discuss concerns about Summers would be things of the past. Instead, faculty members seem unable (or unwilling) to articulate their actual grievances with Summers or explain the motivation behind the HCCR. In lieu of clarity, we have closed door sessions; instead of open discussion of the troubles facing the Faculty, we have accusations of anti-Semitism.

We have learned several things from the recent struggle with Summers: the danger of creating a culture of fear and the importance of moving openly towards consensus.

But students see the Faculty, not Summers, as the problem—hopelessly isolated, out of touch, and politically correct. As one of my friends—an economics and philosophy concentrator and an ardent Summers supporter—told me last week when arguing that the Faculty had made an egregious error in leading the cause for Summers’ ouster, “Harvard has to stop pretending it’s a liberal arts school.” He is not alone in this assesment: most students support Summers because he seems to be a straight thinker and a straight talker.

While I have been in Faculty meetings and had the privilege of speaking with professors for Crimson articles about their concerns for research and their undergraduates, most Harvard students see their professors for six hours a week. This disconnect is not the fault of conservatism, or anti-semitism; it has to do with a lack of communication. Most students have not perused the collection of essays on general education penned by professors Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. ’53, Helen Vendler, Stanley H. Hoffman, Richard F. Thomas, and others, offering insight into the thought process that supposedly guides the HCCR (and why should they have? They’re hidden away on the Facutly of Arts and Sciences website). It’s too bad the ideas in these essays have not translated into a meaningful guiding philosophy for the review or that students are scarcely aware they exist. Instead, we are left with a set of flaccid administrative reforms rather than innovative ideas that indicate, as Professor Julie Buckler writes, “the next step in the evolution of our own thinking, and not as a break from past practices.” What’s worse, most students don’t know these ideas even exist, or understand how students relate to them.

“There is no perfect curriculum,” writes Rev. Peter J. Gomes in his essay, “only one that works as well as it can for its peculiar moment in time.” The set of recommendations as it now stands says little about the contemporary challenges to a liberal arts education, focusing on streamlining our curriculum rather than remedying the antiquated ideas behind it.

To that end, the Faculty should concern itself not just with the threat of specialization within their own ranks but also understand the nature of specialization and the unique perspective of Harvard students.

A quarter of my class will graduate in June with degrees in government or economics. Over a thousand students each year go through some form of recruiting process for jobs in finance and consulting. More than ever, economic incentives (in theory and in practice) dictate the courses of college students across the country.

I don’t say this to cast aspersions on the pursuits of my peers or to suggest that a curriculum cater to these new predilections toward the social sciences. Rather, it is the task of professors today to make a compelling case for a liberal arts education, to not only facilitate distribution requirements but to show us why we should care about the Elements of Rhetoric, the Matter in the Universe, and the Making of Modern South Asia.

If you support the HCCR’s proposals, stand up, raise your hand, and tell us why we should go there with you. And if you don’t, then let’s start again and craft a groundbreaking review of which we can be proud. Otherwise, the HCCR will be a beebee gun bullet shot out of a cannon.

Don’t alienate us, educate us.

Rebecca D. O’Brien ’06 is a history and literature concentrator in Kirkland House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.