Essential Ethics?

It seems that everybody on campus has selected one Core Curriculum area that they feel we must keep in the new general education system. In particular, Moral Reasoning seems to have garnered a plethora of supporters who want to graft it onto the proposed system of three courses in each of three areas—the Study of Societies, Science and Technology, and the Arts and Humanities—which could be fulfilled with either departmental courses or broad interdisciplinary “Courses in General Education.” Despite their good intentions, we believe that there should not be sub-requirements like a Moral Reasoning requirement.

The rationale for the fundamentally simple three-by-three system without a Moral Reasoning requirement was made by the Committee on General Education in their report: “As members of the Committee suggested adding a sub-requirement in, for example, foreign cultures, moral reasoning, or biological science, our set of requirements began to grow, with no clear principles by which to limit them or criteria by which to preference some subcategories over others. In the end, we concluded that the fewer categories we have organizing the distribution requirement, the more choice students will have in selecting courses across the College.” We are compelled by the soundness of the committee’s findings and their decision to err toward empowering students with choice.

Essentially, if each faction of the Faculty got their favorite discipline made a requirement, we would have a system of one course in each of nine areas like the Core Curriculum. Such a system would suffer the Core’s chronic problems; it would be a contrived and complex system that pigeonholes students into taking specific classes and creates captive audiences with no incentive for professors to improve.

Proponents of Moral Reasoning, however, claim that the University has a unique ethical mission to educate informed citizens who have the tools to think critically about moral issues. By forcing students to read great texts in political and ethical theory, they argue, Harvard can get students to start thinking about key questions and potential answers. Moral Reasoning, in other words, forces students to take their academic vitamins whether they like it or not.

We, however, do not agree that Moral Reasoning is so exceptional. Moral Reasoning as it exists now—reading political philosophy—is a very narrow conception of how one should think about ethical questions. Indeed, a host of courses in the humanities and social sciences deal with moral questions. Even science courses, not usually thought of as ethics-related, are expanding to address bioethical questions. We do not see why the political philosophy approach to moral issues is so far superior as to coerce students to face it.

Some proponents agree with this critique of the current Moral Reasoning system and suggest that Harvard instead require an “ethically related” course. Approving a course to be ethically related, however, would force students into selecting from a small, inevitably arbitrary menu of classes, creating the Core’s problems anew. Furthermore, it would incentiveize professors to manipulate and build their curricula around this requirement, creating contrived courses.

Instead of forcing a requirement upon students, faculty should create exciting courses that attract students without being required. Under such a system, we have no doubt that the great Moral Reasoning courses—like Moral Reasoning 22: “Justice”—will still attract students. Additionally, it would be hard for a student to get through the new general education system without addressing moral issues. Indeed, a student would have to go out of her way to do so.

In the end, while we recognize the importance of a moral component to education, forcing it upon students by adding a Moral Reasoning requirement to the general education system is a recipe for disaster. Students would be better served by a simple open-ended system, like the one proposed, in which they were attracted to ethics courses by the dynamism of the class rather than the threat of not receiving a diploma.