Gen Ed: Familiarity Breeds Contentment

From the time of President Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf, educators have sought repeatedly to offset specialization in American colleges. Harvard's General Education program has been one of the broadest of these attempts to infuse, as President Conant wrote, "the liberal and humane tradition into our entire educational system."

Under the old distribution system, students could, for example, fulfill a science requirement with an elementary math course. Under General Education, students conform to the spirit as well as the letter of the law. Its success in accomplishing this conformity is reflected in its acceptance by the undergraduate, to whom its objectives have become as familiar as the term "gen ed" itself.

This acceptance has been encouraging to the administrators of the program, but it has magnified one of the basic problems of General Education. Now, on the tenth anniversary of the "sacred redbook"--the report of the Committee on General Education in a Free Society--and as Kenneth B. Murdock '16 takes over the chairmanship of the effective Committee on General Education, the problem again becomes significant: how to maintain the faculty's initial interest in the experiment, both for the benefit of General Education and for the general curiculum.

Unlike such transitory procedural problems as enrollment limits, the questions of the faculty's relation to General Education has been an important one since the inauguration of the program. It was a problem of a reversible reaction for the founders.

Curious, Not Compulsed

First, in the words of Paul H. Buck, former provost, and chairman of the committee which wrote the "redbook": "Our problem was to get the Harvard faculty interested in teaching students who are curious rather than compulsed," with the hope that the experimental enthusiasm would in large part counter the danger of superficiality in the basic survey courses.

To see that this broad aim of renewing interest in teaching has been achieved, one need speak only to Charles H. Taylor, Lea Professor of Medieval History. Before the coming of General Education, Taylor gave History 1, a popular but factual course, studying for which required such aids as chronological outlines.

As important as it was, however, to history concentrators, Taylor agrees that its successor under Gen Ed, Social Sciences 1, has succeeded ing provoking important ideas as well as providing facts, and in improving teaching methods. "I appreciate extremely the opportunity to convert History 1 to Social Sciences 1. I, and I think the staff, have enjoyed it much more, and felt that we have been giving a much better article for both concentrator and non-concentrator."

Even a critic of General Education, such as Howard Mumford Jones, who laments the passing of the free elective system in the current Atlantic, believes that, "Whether or not the goal is reached, the enthusiasm from a special belief in General Education is all to the good."

It would be manifestly incorrect to say that the faculty, before General Education, was not interested in teaching, or that there were not already faculty members giving departmental courses in the spirit of general education. "General Education gave members of the faculty the opportunity to do what they already wanted to do," asserts Samuel H. Beer, professor of Government and General Education. "If it hadn't, it wouldn't have worked."

'A Man . . . Out of Himself'

General Education not only provided the opportunity for those already interested; it provided an atmosphere convincing to those who weren't. Its very creation provoked, in President Pusey's words, "a real enthusiasm and a release of vitality."

This spirit was wisely encouraged, for although each of the three areas of Gen Ed sought common goals on the lower level, courses were not restricted to a single approach. Professors, were instead given latitude in adapting old courses, as in Taylor's case, or in creating entirely new ones--in order to provide the same pill with coatings variously-flavored for the students, and also, as Beer asserts, because "the only way to get a good course is for a man to make it out of himself."

In the lower level courses, at least, this diversity has created a problem of focus. In the Social Sciences, the focus is "an examination of the institutional and theoretical aspects of the Western heritage," while the approaches vary from historical survey to anthropological analysis.

How to make the common aim continually apparent is thus an essential element of the program. In the Natural Sciences, there is, according to Gerald J. Holton, associate professor of Physics and General Education, great consideration for "how to put the material across"--through frequent intra-area meetings.

Such meetings not only reaffirm the purpose of the Nat Scis: "to provide science courses at the introductory level which have general rather than specialists education as their primary aim . . ." but also provide cross-pollination of ideas to mutual benefit.

There are occasional General Education dinners, at which mutual problems are discussed, but Taylor feels that in addition the idea of the Natural Science meetings could be usefully adopted by the Social Sciences. For he emphasizes the importance of the experimental spirit: "the problem is to strike a balance between healthy experimentation and the necessary requirements of a regular routine."

Persistent Prerequisite

This diversity and experimental nature are perhaps even more apparent in the advanced courses. For here, they afford the opportunity for courses which might otherwise not be possible. There is no particular focus or rationale on the upper level, except to encourage courses which cross departmental lines, or which could not fit conveniently into any single field of concentration.

The program thus allows Louis Hartz, for example, to teach "Democratic Theory and Its Critics"--which includes at least the departments of History and Government, or Harlow Shapley to teach "Cosmography" for which the only prerequisite is "persistent curiosity." Indeed, according to Hartz, the courses should not fit into any pattern, nor focus on any goal. Instead, "they should survive on their individual merits."

The difficulty, however, is that General Education is no longer a newborn child, who by his simple existence provokes the grins and gentle pats of his relatives. Rather, the new child has grown into a gangling adolescent, whose existence is no longer marveled at, and whose presence is taken almost for granted. Herein lies the broad problem facing the newly-appointed Murdock, and his staff. The experimental novelty of the General Education program is gone; the need for spirited teaching and imaginatively-conceived courses is not.

The first part of the problem is that aptly summarized by Taylor: "an inherent danger in any system is that it institutionalizes . . . there is an inevitable tendency toward security." For General Education, must allow a certain degree of stability and continuity from year to year in existing courses, if only to make them manageable for professors and teaching fellows.

The second and more significant problem is to continue attracting faculty members into the program. "The people who are in the program are still captivated," notes Stephen R. Graubard, executive secretary of the General Education committee. "The problem is to maintain this enthusiasm among the non-General Education faculty."

The Elder Statesman

President Pusey asserts that "my interest is that the entire faculty continues its awareness and sense of responsibility for General Education. It should not have to become the property of the small group of faculty members who love it." His selection of Murdock to succeed Philip J. Rhinelander '29 is then both a logical and reassuring one.

For Murdock is a former Dean of the Faculty and English professor--an "elder statesman" of the College as holds the respect necessary to induce men to teach General Education courses, and both the academic and administrative back-ground to make the program work smoothly. Further, selection of a man of his stature reflects deep interest on the part of the administration.

He himself is "not greatly concerned with any single theory of General Education," but rather with the individual teacher. Murdock's feeling is that General Education, in an era of ever-increasing specialization, needs greater not less emphasis.

Programs similar to general education have degenerated into mere surveys whose apparent purpose is to make their students "better readers of the New York Times." Murdock feels that a primary criterion at Harvard should continue to be that "every course fits people better than they would other wise be fitted to live in our free society." But not from a Five-Foot Shelf. "I hope what we offer," he smiles, "can't all be put on a shelf.PAUL H. BUCK