Whither the Faculty’s Passion?

As upperclassmen drag themselves back to class and the Class of 2011 exuberantly swarms the Yard, one thing seems to be missing: any indication of the new General Education curriculum that the Faculty passed last May. Freshmen—and their advisers—barely know of its existence. Faculty members—whose enthusiasm is critical to get the new program off the ground—seem apathetic. And the committee that will decide the critical details of implementation and transition has yet to even convene. In fact, its first meeting is tomorrow.

In other words, after four critical months, not one iota of progress is apparent.

Though summer is a time for rejuvenation, it is not an excuse for stagnation. Students are expected to scan the course catalog and plan for their upcoming semester during their time off. So it is shameful to see that the administrators in charge of pushing General Education afforded themselves vacations in lieu of taking even baby steps in the march to implement the new curriculum. Reinvigorating Harvard’s Core will require a Herculean effort, and sloth is not an option.

This delay in curricular development has already had consequences for the newest crop of freshmen. When the Class of 2011 arrived on campus, their revamped advising system contained hardly a mention of Gen Ed, but many a mention of the Core. “We were taught to act as if there is no such thing as Gen Ed,” says Mohamad M. Ali ’11. Peer Advising Fellows were instructed to advise freshmen to pick classes assuming the current Core curriculum will be in place for the remainder of their time at Harvard, on the hope that their Core classes will be grandfathered into the new program.

These sad developments are a stark and disheartening reminder of just how little enthusiasm or optimism Faculty, students, and administrators have that the new General Education curriculum will be a substantive change. By not familiarizing the incoming freshman class with Gen Ed as well as the Core, Harvard has betrayed its discomfort and confusion with the new program. The final vote last May was supposed to provide us with a bold new direction; instead it has left us adrift.

This reservation is not, however, unwarranted. General Education remains so underdeveloped that at this point, it would be impossible to guide students into the system. This is hardly surprising to us; the imperative to satisfy each micro-constituency in the Faculty could result in little more than a muddled and insipid rehash of the old Core. The College missed a crucial opportunity to flesh out and develop the General Education curriculum over the past four months, a move that would have benefited the entire student body and especially the Class of 2011.

Perhaps the College is acting with the best intentions, moving slowly, and deliberately, to avoid rash decisions. Yet without a firm and articulated plan of action, the College’s apprehension could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. General Education will only be a change worthy of five years of deliberation if it has an underlying vision behind which currently apathetic faculty, students, and administrators can rally.

For that vision we look to the Standing Committee on General Education, which has quite a challenge in front of it. With all of the optimism we can muster in the face of such foreboding omens, we wish it godspeed.