A Time to Modify

As the Core Curriculum’s five-year review approaches, it may seem that the Faculty, the University community in general, and a good portion of the national press have already said all there is to say about Harvard’s grand educational experiment. This satiation must not dissuade the Faculty, however, from reevaluating the infamous set of undergraduate requirements with an open mind. While the Faculty is clearly unlikely to completely dismantle a program so painstakingly and expensively built up, the group should take this opportunity to make some much-needed adjustments.

We have long maintained that, for all its success in revitalizing the tottering General Education structure, creating interesting new courses, and bringing Faculty stars before undergraduates, the Core has several basic flaws. The most glaring of these is rigidity. The Core’s planners rejected the idea that any course besides those specifically prescribed for the Core could possibly fulfill the objective of teaching students the various “modes of inquiry” used in different fields; hence, they forbade any substitution of departmental courses, either basic or advanced, for the carefully designed “case study” courses approved by the committee.

The result is that, as under the Gen Ed system, students devote about half their courses to their concentration, eight to the Core, and the remaining quarter to electives. But unlike in Gen Ed, the student with a sincere desire not only to learn modes of inquiry, but also to gain an educated person’s familiarity with a subject outside his major—be it Fine Arts 13, History 71, or Shakespeare—must do so by sacrificing two of a precious eight elective slots. These slots are also expected to suffice for truly far-flung intellectual exploration, such as cross-registration, freshman false starts, or esoteric departmental offerings. Even students who wish to take an introductory computer course—certainly a “mode of inquiry” in itself—now receive no Core credit for doing so.

The Core planners’ major argument—that Core courses teach “modes of inquiry” and “habits of mind” rather than mechanically transmitting a body of facts—has some merit. Surely these modes are useful. But the great fallacy in the Core as implemented so far is that the two approaches—the “mode of inquiry” and the survey course—are somehow mutually exclusive. They are not, and a well-taught survey course invariably transmits a case study in intellectual approach along with the working knowledge of a field that makes such an approach meaningful. For evidence, Core planners should look to their own most hugely successful Core course, the venerable Social Analysis 10, “Principles of Economics,” or to Historical Studies A-17, “Modern Political Ideologies,” in content a straightforward introduction to political philosophy.

But why should economics and political philosophy be the only fields in which students may gain a basic grounding, and gain credit for it as such, without sacrificing an elective slot? In the social sciences, similar well-thought-out introductions to sociology, anthropology and psychology should join Soc Anal 10. The Humanities Core should incorporate existing surveys of fine arts, of various cultural histories and literatures, of Shakespeare, and of philosophy. The sciences should expand on a sensible modification recently made public, which allows upperclassmen to count certain introductory science courses, such as Physics 12 and Chem 5a for the Core—presumably to ease the lot of premeds, until now the most hapless victims of Core rigidity.

There is no need to eliminate the many fine courses already established which approach these disciplines more imaginatively; some students may well prefer them. But it would be foolish to maintain that students learn less about artistic inquiry by tracing the course of art in the Western world than by examining “The Development of the String Quartet.” And it would be shameful to continue forcing students to eschew a broader grounding if they choose to seek one.