The Whole Man

A committee which sets out "to consider whether a Harvard education produces a whole man" is certainly biting off plenty whether more than it can chew we cannot yet tell.

The brave new committee, which has an indirect connection with the Council will be co-chaired by David C. Poskanzer '50, who also ran the group which produced the Poskanzer Report, and Dominique Wyant '50. Sometime next week they will select ten "outstanding men" from the University, not necessarily undergraduates, to make up the small group.

They plan to consider the problem from two angles: 1. What is the ultimate aim, what is a whole man? and 2. What does a Harvard education do for a man in the course of four years?

There are various projected methods of study. The committee may follow a class through its whole career at Harvard, it may consult alumni, it will certainly be in close contact with faculty members.

It will run up against problems. Unlike the Poskanzer Report, of which this latest investigation is a logical extension, the committee will be dealing mainly in abstract ideas. It is possible to determine objectively, if not statistically, whether tutorial is more effective educationally than lectures; but it may prove to be impossible to determine how much tutorial contributes to the making of the "whole man". The possibility that the committee may not succeed has been recognized: it is not committed to making a report, but is just "considering."

One must congratulate the Council for sponsoring this investigation, however absent-mindedly, and exhort it to do more of the same; one must admire Poskanzer and Wyant for taking the whole man as their province, and wish them luck in their undertaking.