General Re-Education

In the beginning, we were cautiously optimistic; we had high hopes for Harvard’s general education review. It would refresh the ponderous, sometimes-suffocating Core and perhaps even reanimate academic discourse on campus. But as time wore on, as preliminary reports gave way to final reports and final reports gave way to Faculty legislation, we have become increasingly disillusioned.

It now seems to us that the Curricular Review’s guiding philosophy of general education is simply too controversial and unwieldy to be practicable at Harvard at any time in the foreseeable future. It has been diluted by Faculty legislation, loopholed by the same powerful standing committees that spelled the doom of the Core, and tacked on to by ill-considered amendments to such a degree that it no longer seems to us a coherent, viable statement of what a modern day Harvard graduate should know.

Perhaps, in the modern day University with its cross-disciplinary squabbles and fragile egos, it is practically impossible to produce such a statement. Perhaps, Harvard College would be better off with a simple distribution requirement.

The Task Force on General Education’s initial report—more than four years in the making after another report stalled—showed signs of promise when a draft was released in October and when a final version was released in February. Finally, it seemed, the general education requirements for Harvard undergraduates would be endowed with a uniting principle. Gone would be the days of the extant Core’s cornucopia of obscurities, masquerading as “modes of inquiry” somehow relevant and necessary to our liberal education.

No more “Lit & Arts B-48: Chinese Imaginary Space.” No more “Science B-57: Dinosaurs and their Relatives.” Instead, our general education would be one of purpose, designed to nurture urbane critical thinkers equipped to make sense of the modern world.

But this devoutly-wished consummation has not arrived. Nor will it.

In hoping to escape the banality and seeming pointlessness of the Core, many—including ourselves—assumed that anything would be better. The General Education proposal, replete with its promises of global awareness and civic engagement, however, has irrevocably proven its infeasibility.

The proposal promised not to produce “introductions to disciplines,” but rather a preparation for “civic engagement,” an understanding of “traditions of art, ideas, and values,” an ability to “respond critically and constructively to change,” and a concern for “ethical dimensions.” But when faced with examination by the Faculty, the proposal could not sustain a uniting philosophy broad enough to satisfy the parochial concerns of each department without becoming so vague as to be effectively meaningless.

The Faculty’s recent equivocation is a case-in-point. Less than two weeks after deciding by a twenty-vote margin to forestall the inclusion of “history” into the General Education category “Culture and Belief,” the Faculty reversed course and mandated that every student must take at least one class dealing with the “study of the past.” How exactly this newest obligation would practically fit into the General Education program is unclear. Including the study of history appears to have partially transformed the original philosophy into the discipline-focused pedagogy it sought to replace.

With a sizable number of faculty members still clamoring behind the scenes for further exceptions and inclusions of their own particular areas of expertise, and anemic implementing legislation that leaves many of the important details of implementation to the whims of an all-powerful standing committee, the new system threatens to suffer from the same forces of accretion that have watered down the Core. For better or worse, our august professorate cannot think in terms abstracted from individual disciplines and cannot let go of the temptation to herd students into their classrooms by requirement. Thus, we can foresee nothing but inevitable failure in a program which tries to abolish all such intellectual parochialism when such sectarian loyalties abide so deeply.

Despite our newfound skepticism, we hold fast to the most fundamental of our original complaints with the Core, and our original hopes for general education. Greater flexibility—including a vast number of departmental courses for Core, or General Education credit—still ranks highest on or list of priorities. And we remain optimistic that whatever finally emerges from the Faculty legislation can and should include such measures.

Perhaps the most practical and most prudent proposal for general education is in fact a simple distribution requirement. Let us jettison the passé “modes of inquiry” bequeathed to us by the Core, as well as the now-rendered-meaningless avant-garde “global” citizen General Education proposal. Instead, the Faculty should institute a few broad categories in which all general education requirements can subsist.

Notably, some faculty members rejected such a system when the original committees charged with conducting a review of Harvard’s general education system proposed it over a year ago. Objections raised ranged from it being too vague to it not being able to “put Harvard on the front page of The New York Times,” according to Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan.

True enough. A distribution requirement isn’t a particularly inspiring statement on general education, nor even a particularly intellectually satisfying one. But it does retain the advantages of coherence and practicality. With many options for fulfilling these basic requirements, flexibility for which students plead can be achieved.

To the Faculty, we propose an armistice in these academic skirmishes: no bruised egos, no inflexible or convoluted Core-like requirements. Let us consign the Curricular Review’s hopeful, yet ultimately unworkable innovations to the dustbin of failed projects and impractical dreams.

Vote down the current General Education proposal and instead institute a broad and flexible distribution requirement.