INCOMPETENT FACULTY?

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It seems to me that the real lesson of the Doty Report and the subsequent squabbling in the Faculty is that the Faculty is incompetent to deal with questions of education. In an era in which the challenge facing education in a democracy is to combine the political role of citizen with the social role of technocrat, a body committed to narrowness by habit and inclination should be the last source from which help is sought. The Faculty as individuals have long since abandoned a real commitment to the broad concept of the educated man.

Yet it is the educated man who must bear the burden of making democracy in a technical age a responsible form of government. Though everyone, of necessity, will have to function as a specialist, it is only through the acquisition of a wide and deep general background that anyone will be able to function effectively as a citizen.

In the light of these considerations, it is urgent that serious consideration be given to curbing the irresponsible freedom which the undergraduate enjoys in the present state of confusion. What is not needed is any further collapse of undergraduate education into craft guilds in the image of the Faculty. Sheer necessity requires a closely co-ordinated and comprehensive undergraduate program which will ensure that every Harvard graduate understand, with some degree of sophistication, what is going on in the major fields of serious endeavor. Peter A. Fine '64-3