A Conservative Revolution

In the years since 1945, the General Education Program as set forth in the Redbook (General Education in a Free Society) has undergone, in the words of the Doty Committee, a process of "erosion." The formal requirements placed on the undergraduate, although riddled by an increasing number of exceptions, have remained fairly rigid. But in assembling the courses that fulfill these requirements, the Gen Ed Committee has had neither the resources to insure that its program was adequate, nor--and this is perhaps its most serious weakness--a rationale for existence that had any real application to the Program as it developed.

Almost entirely, the General Education Program has consisted of those courses that someone happened to want to offer as Gen Ed courses, and sometimes--particularly in the sciences--the planning of courses has been based as much upon considerations of financing and staffing as upon a real evaluation of the course's suitability for the purposes of General Education (a criterion which is difficult to apply today, for few, if any, of the existing courses have any relation to the purposes set forth in the Redbook).

Strict Requirement

If the Gen Ed Program has come to consist of a strict requirement that students choose from among courses which have no particular reason for being on the General Education lists, it has more recently been exposed to more serious attack--competition from other programs (freshman seminars, sophomore standing, the Visual Arts Center) which would either eliminate entirely or dominate much of the extra departmental work of their participants. The Gen Ed Program, if it is to be something more than an ever-loosening distribution requirement, is in need of a revolution. It is revolution that the Doty Committee proposes, but an extremely conservative one.

By 1959, when the Bruner Committee made its report, the history-oriented courses in the Natural Sciences which the Redbook proposed had been replaced largely by courses which taught science per se. One effect the Doty Report will have will be to perform for the Social Sciences and Humanities (which have come along way from the monolithic pattern proposed by the Redbook) the legitimizing function which the Bruner Report accomplished for the Natural Sciences. The report does this, first, by maintaining that, in addition to ingraining in Harvard freshmen the understanding of the Western tradition which the Redbook believed important, Gen Ed should show a student the place, in the whole field of knowledge, of his own specialty and make him aware of other specialties. The report also suggests that, rather than the survey-like exposure to the high points of Western tradition which the Redbook proposed, the focus of General Education in the Humanities and Social Sciences should be upon "an acquaintance with themes." More than anything else, this is a recognition and acceptance of what elementary Hum's and Soc Sci's are now doing.

Restated Aims

At the same time that it restates the aims of General Education in terms which have some relevance to what Gen Ed courses are actually doing today, the Doty Committee also attempts to bring under the more complete control of the Program participants in Freshman Seminars and students with Sophomore Standing. It was hard to forbid these exceptions to the requirements when the programs in question could claim to satisfy the Redbook's goals as well as the Gen Ed courses did. Now, at least, the Gen Ed Committee has a realistic standard against which to judge proposed substitutes for part of the usual Gen Ed requirement.

Most of the complaints against the present Gen Ed program, however, have been neither based on ideological grounds nor aimed at the formal requirements. Rather they have been objections to the quality of individual courses--that they are dull, superficial, badly taught, or useless. Here the recommendations of the Doty Committee seems more overdue than startling. Several of the departments offer two or three introductory courses appropriate to different levels of preparation, and the possibility of two-year sequences of Gen Ed courses was mentioned, although not recommended, in the Bruner Report.

Probably the most important recommendations of the Gen Ed Committee, however, are its proposals to strengthen the hand of the Gen Ed Committee in its battle to staff its courses. Whether or not its recommendations will succeed, if they are adopted, is an open question, but they combine the carrot of sabbaticals and the stick of quotas into a system of persuasion and coercion more extensive than anything yet tried. It is questionable, however, how they will offset the idea in the minds of junior Faculty members that their promotion will depend more upon their work in their departments then upon the inspirational quality of their Gen Ed lectures and sections. Motivating teachers, however, is not a problem of Gen Ed courses alone.

It is an exaggeration to imply that the present General Education Program is moribund or that the Doty's Committee's recommendations, if adopted whole, would institute a program with the sense of direction that the Redbook anticipated, if such be desired. But its recommendations constitute a great improvement over what it terms the present posture of "holding the line."