Sizer Appoints Committee to Study Basic Aims of Ed School Programs

Theodore R. Sizer, dean of the Graduate School of Education, has named a special 11-member committee to survey graduate programs in education and to draw up recommendations for the future course of the Ed School.

Although the committee will look closely at all aspects of the Ed School's curriculum, it will not limit its recommendations to Harvard, but will attempt to establish general priorities for university schools of education. To accomplish this task the committee will invite educators from all over the country to present their views.

"This is the first time that any faculty of Education will have undertaken a study of this scope," Israel Scheffler, professor of Education and Philosophy, and chairman of the new committee, said yesterday.

In the breadth of its approach, the committee resembles the University Committee on General Education which wrote General Education in a Free Society, Sizer explained that, like the original committee, the Ed School group will have three main aims.

* A survey of the current state of graduate study in education, and a summary of main ideas about it;

* A general prescription of objectives for graduate schools of education in large universities;

* Particular recommendations for the School of Education.

"The only way to talk about Harvard is to talk about universities in general; you have to get away from parochial concerns," Sizer said.

While most recent studies of education schools have concentrated on teacher-training, the committee will give special attention to Ph.D. programs in education. Among the questions it will consider, Scheffler said, are how research in education ought to be organized--a particularly important point in view of Harvard's special research facilities--and how trainer of teachers, the so-called "clinical professors," should themselves be educated.

The committee will also focus on the relation between the School of Education and society at large, and will discuss such problems as big city slums, de facto segregation, and automation, as they relate to education.

Scheffler said the committee would meet regularly throughout the year and hopes to have a report ready by the end of next summer. A committee staff will do research on historical aspects of the study and will help prepare working papers for committee members.