A Failure of Definition

When the Doty Committee was appointed to study the state of General Education at Harvard, it faced an obvious but complex problem: Could it make both coherent and strong a program of General Education which was beset by confused and somewhat contradictory purposes, bedeviled by out-of-date requirements, and beleaguered by the departments that continually frustrated attempts to lure Faculty members into the program? Last May, when the report was released, the decision became apparent; the Doty Committee had emphasized strength not coherence, had been pragmatic and political but not philosophical.

The Committee addressed itself most creatively to the enfeebled health of the Gen Ed administration, specifically the inability to attract professors to teach Gen Ed and the difficulty in finding men to staff the courses. Consequently, the most radical sections of the report asked for a significant rearmament of the administrative structure. But if the Committee pragmatically faced administrative problems, it sloughed over or slighted important questions of definition and purpose with political deftness.

Aware of the pressing need for strengthening Gen Ed, the Committee has either left definitions innocuously vague or appeased opposing factions by adopting contradictory compromises, in both cases to avoid controversy and pass problems on to the new Committee on General Education for solution. But we think these problems should be debated--now.

Specifically, however right the report is about administrative reform, its first responsibility should have been to redefine the goals of General Education and explain the means for attaining them. But it is here that the report does not confront its task with sufficient candor and commits two errors, one of omission, one of commission.

* OMISSION--Broadly, in discussing the aims of Gen Ed, the Doty report has to a large extent formalized the existing, confused structure. It has failed to define what a Gen Ed course should be and do, to confront a basic problem plaguing the present program: How does one differentiate between a Gen Ed course and an introductory departmental offering?

* COMMISSION--Secondly, the report, in its discussion of the means for attaining the goals of General Education, has set up a contradiction. The Committee hopes to include more areas of knowledge in the new program, it wants students to have wide experience outside their own field of concentration, but also it hopes undergraduates will pursue certain Gen Ed topics in depth through course sequences. In short, the Doty Committee wants students to cover a wide range of topics but also wants them to pursue special interests in depth at the same time. Without increasing the total Gen Ed requirement beyond the present number (six plus Gen Ed Ahf), these contradictory goals are impossible to attain.

* * *

THE FAILURE OF DEFINITION: One of the central problems facing the Doty Committee when it was formed two years ago was the need to redefine a program of General Education that had fallen into increasing disarray since it had been proposed in 1945. In a college which views a liberal arts education as two-pronged, general and departmental, it was clearly the role of the college (through the Committee on General Education) to give students an antidote for the pressures of narrow specialization and premature professionalism. But, although there has always been broad agreement on the need for a nondepartmental program, what that program would do has never been precisely clear.

In 1945, the "Redbook," General Education in a Free Society, defined a "general" education as one that was "shared" (students would take the same lower level courses) and "philosophical" (the content of the courses would be concerned with the historic themes of Western civilization). But in the last nineteen years the word general as shared and philosophical has become almost meaningless; students do not have to take a core of offerings but instead have some choice, and the themes of the West are only part of a program which emphasizes methodology as much as historical content, quantitative analysis as much as an appreciation of the qualitative values of our past. Moreover, the broad explosion of knowledge in the past two decades with a corresponding trend towards specialized, highly technical research has been the force that has put General Education at Harvard out of joint.

In response to this challenge, the Doty Committee has proposed three aims for the refurbished Gen Ed program: In summary form, it is the task of Gen Ed

1. To give the student an appreciation of the civilization of which he is a part.

2. To make him aware of different fields and methods of inquiry.

3. To encourage a broader view of the potentialities and limitations of his own specialty.

It is precisely this definition which we find distressingly inadequate.

In essence, the redefinition of General Education only formalizes the somewhat confused system which exists today, a system which includes both historical (1) and methodological (2) approaches and which gives a student perspective on his own field of concentration by requiring him to take courses in other areas (3). General Education is to a degree defined negatively--it is not departmental education.

The report's definition of Gen Ed only discusses the broad "experience" of General Education as a total program and almost completely neglects to define a General Education course. This critical failure to define a Gen Ed course, to differentiate it from an introductory departmental course, leaves the Doty Committee's conception of Gen Ed open to a crucial criticism that should have been answered. Can a student have the Gen Ed "experience" as outlined by the aims of the report by taking a series of departmental courses, some methodological in emphasis, some historical, all outside a student's field of concentration? In short, could a student get a "general" education through a system of distribution requirements which would not include specific "Gen Ed" courses?

This failure to establish the relevance and need for special Gen Ed courses (as opposed to the Gen Ed experience) is an especially salient failing since the report places so much emphasis on the need for a much stronger, unique administrative body for General Education. Most likely, the Doty Committee decided to leave the aims of Gen Ed quite broad and avoid a prolonged controversy which would delay the needed administrative reforms. But whatever the reason, the failure of definition should be remedied.

TOWARDS A DEFINITION: If we agree with the need for General Education and the report's goals for Gen Ed but criticize these aims as being too vague, what further definitions of purpose should be made? Clearly, discussion must center on what a General Education course should be and do.

In a world of burgeoning knowledge, it has become a ludicrous truism that the educated man cannot know everything. So, too, very few think that the history of Western civilization is by itself an adequate key to an appreciation of the full range of knowledge.

But, although a Gen Ed course may no longer be narrowly "shared" or "philosophical," may no longer have as its first objective the training of a man specifically for participation in democratic society, nonetheless its importance has hardly diminished. The generally educated man should be doing nothing less than preparing to organize his preceptions. He should learn what it is like to put on the scientist's thinking cap, or the behavioral scientist's, or the historian's, or the humanist's.

More specifically, a man with a general education should possess the tools to structure his present and future thinking in four broad areas of knowledge, Natural Science, Behaviorial Science, History, and Literature. He should be given the vocabulary in each of the four large fields of knowledge which will encourage him to delve further into that area and be able to organize his thoughts when he does so. In short, the generally educated man is distinguished not by the breadth of what he knows, but by this ability to comprehend and assimilate a broad (general, if you will) range of material.

As we see it, the role of a Gen Ed course is to produce this man through its special ability to combine a) disciplines, b) historical periods, and c) national styles. This is not to emphasize methodology over historic themes; in science a methodological vocabulary is a key to understanding, but in the humanities a knowledge of basic philosophers from Plato to, say, Dewey could easily serve to structure further exploration in that area.

Whereas the Doty Committee's goals helped differentiate the total "experience" of General Education from the experience of departmental education, we suggest the above reasoning as a profitable way to distinguish between a Gen Ed course and a departmental course. Although a Gen Ed course may treat a few varied topics in greater depth than an introductory departmental course, it will be aiming at a broader goal. A Gen Ed course should try to imbue in the undergraduate the tendency to think like a student in Natural Sciences, Behavioral Sciences, History, or Literature.

To those who claim that this goal is beyond attainment, we would cite those present Gen Ed courses which do an excellent job of giving the student a broad, usable vocabulary, i.e., Nat Sci 5, Hum 6, Soc Sci 2. For example, Nat Sci 5 combines physics, chemistry and biology in giving the student tools to gain insight into a wide range of scientific topics. Similarly, Soc Sci 2 and Hum 6 allow the student to read history or literature with a greatly enhanced sense of perspective. On the other hand, a course like Nat Sci 10 is too narrowly conceived to qualify as a future Gen Ed course.

The difference between a Gen Ed and departmental course should be clearly delineated. Some Ed courses could conceivably be used as introductory departmental offering, although this would happen rarely. But a series of departmental courses should never replace the unique Gen Ed offerings, a situation which could theoretically occur under the imprecise definition of General Education offered by the Doty Committee.

* * *

This stress on definition is not simply a hassle over semantics, nor is it solely an attempt to refute a potential criticism of General Education. Rather, only by making clear-the goals of the Gen Ed experience and the Gen Ed course can a complete discussion about the contours of the specific Gen Ed program begin. Because it has failed to define aims adequately, the Doty Committee has also failed to propose a logical plan for giving students a General Education, has, in fact, included a fundamental contradiction in the new rules for the reformulation of Gen Ed.

(Tomorrow the CRIMSON will discuss this conflict in the second of three editorials evaluating the Doty Report.)