Excerpts From the Doty Committee Report

The following are excerpts from the 102-page report of the Special Committee to Review the Present Status and Problems of the General Education Program, released yesterday. Headed by Paul M. Doty, professor of Chemistry, the group also includes Bernard Bailyn, professor of History; Paul H. Buck, former dean of the Faculty; Mary I. Bunting, president of Radcliffe; John H. Finley, Jr. '25, Master of Eliot House and chairman of the Committee on General Education; Richard T. Gill '48, Master of Leverett House; Leo Goldberg '34, Higgins Professor of Astronomy; Dean Monro; and David D. Perkins '51, associate professor of English. Gerald Holton, professor of Physics, sat with the committee until his leave of absence began this Fall.

I

A Brief History

The Doty Committee begins its report with a brief history of the General Education Program at Harvard, This history ends with the following evaluation:

In attempting an over-all evaluation of this past history, the committee felt that the first statement should be one about achievements. We believe that the General Education Program has had substantial impact on Harvard and Radcliffe students and that this impact has been valuable in most instances.

The Program has been, as its original authors hoped, a substantial bulwark against overspecialization; it has provided our recent generation of students with a broad encounter with the fundamental forces and ideas that have shaped Western civilization; it has served as an important vehicle for a number of new and intellectually exciting courses which, either because of their interdisciplinary character or because of other special circumstances, did not fit beneath the umbrellas of particular departments; it has inspired a special enthusiasm in a small, dedicated group of faculty members who have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into this kind of teaching to the great benefit of their students....

II

Aims and Needs

As this committee understands the matter, the concept of a liberal arts college involves two central elements. The first has to do with the development in the student of a special competence and a sense of mastery over some particular area and method of knowledge. Such mastery is not, in the specific context of the liberal arts college, intended solely or even primarily as preprofessional training....

A student's field of concentration at Harvard may in fact become the foundation of his professional career, but this is not its basic purpose. In terms of liberal arts objectives, the main reason for having concentrations is the belief that mastery in one particular area will give the student a sense of what mastery in other areas involves and, in general, a deeper conception of the nature of knowledge and its implications for human experience.

Thus, at Harvard, work in a special field is conceived to have ramifications for a student's intellectual development outside his specialty. The department, when they offer fields of concentration, are thus understood to be fulfilling one major responsibility of a liberal education.

But there is also a second central element, and this is concerned not with the mastery of a particular field but with the problem of breadth across fields. Unfortunately, the term "breadth" is inadequate. It does not indicate specifically enough what the aims of General Education are. It also tends to convey the image of sweeping "survey" courses, the kind of course, indeed, against which the advocates of General Education at Harvard have so often arrayed themselves.

In reality, General Education has a multiplicity of objectives.... After much consideration of these matters, the committee came to the conclusion that there were three particular objectives which deserve explicit mention. These objectives are of vital concern in the present day. They are also objectives which are not typically satisfied by departmental programs and hence must be considered a special responsibility of General Education:

1. It is a responsibility of General Education to give all students a grounding in the historic intellectual, institutional, and cultural foundations of Western civilization.

2. It is a responsibility of General Education to acquaint the student with the substance of knowledge, and the method by which it is acquired, in fields other than his own.

3. It is a responsibility of General Education to give the student a more philosophic perspective on his own field of specialization.

In summary form, it is the task of General Education to give the student an appreciation of the civilization of which he is a part, to make him aware of different fields and methods of inquiry, and to encourage a broader view of the potentialities and limitation of his own specialty....

The attempt, however, has been to single out certain particularly important objectives which (a) have clear relevance for a student's liberal education, and (b) are not adequately met by the mastery of some particular field of knowledge. In the committee's view, each of the propositions above meets these conditions. Together, they describe a major area of responsibility for a General Education Program....

III

Problems in the Present Program

After a detailed examination of the operations of the present General Education Program, the committee came to the conclusion that there were three major areas of difficulty involved: (a) the present administrative structure seems inadequate to the task of providing a major, required program of Harvard College; (b) General Education requirements have been too inflexible to take into account the varying levels of student preparation, and the courses offered have been too limited in number; and, finally (c), the content of the present Program is so organized that it either underemphasizes or omits some of the most vigorous areas of modern thought.

Problem of Administration

The difficulties of administering and staffing a non-departmental program in a strongly departmentalized university are well known. In the particular case of the Committee on General Education, which is empowered to run the Harvard General Education Program, the problem is twofold.

In the firstplace, the Committee on General Education has not been given adequate responsibility for many aspects of the curriculum that directly affect the General Education effort ....It seemed to us that the Committee on General Education should have a special responsibility not only for General Education courses but for all areas outside a student's field of concentration. This might include certain of the Freshman Seminars, the Advanced Standing Program, required composition, language and other general requirements, perhaps the potential uses of new facilities in the dramatic and visual arts.

At the present time, the Committee on General Education has little or no responsibility in such matters. They are mainly handled by separate committes or included among the several responsibilities of the Committee on Educational Policy.

The results of this fragmentation are (a) that no group in the Faculty has the responsibility or incentive to look at the problems of nondepartmental education at Harvard in a hard, continuing way, and (b) that none of the competing committees in this area has anything like the power or clear-cut organization of the several departments.

And this leads to the second part of the problem, which is that the Committee on General Education, unlike the departments, lacks an effective and systematic means of securing a faculty and staff. The General Education Program is basically a dependent program....

Requirements and Offerings

A second major problem in the present program has to do with the design of requirements and offerings, particularly at the "elementary" level....

Yet the problem is not created by the material--General Education courses are potentially enormously challenging to both faculty and students--but by the particular design of our Program. Three features of this design seem especially unfortunate:

(1) Elementary General Education courses are all given at approximately the same level of difficulty...Such uniformity is in sharp contrast to the variety of student preparation which has been characteristic of the College in recent years.

(2) Elementary General Education courses do not lead directly to opportunities for further study....

(3) Students have too little choice of courses at the elementary General Education level.

In general, our feeling was that the whole structure was becoming static and rigid....If the Committee on General Education could be properly constituted it is likely that it might take a somewhat more venturesome and experimental view of its tasks....

Content of Present Program

The last of the major areas of weakness that the committee found in the General Education Program has to do with content.

In the Humanities we noticed that while there was primary emphasis on literature and while philosophy was also represented, the non-verbal arts figured scarcely at all....Even more significant was the emphasis on the historical and critical as opposed to the practical in our instruction in the arts. In the present General Education Program not a single course is offered that might loosely be called "creative." ...It did seem desirable to the committee that there be some representation of the practice of the arts in the Program if only in a modest, elective role, particularly in view of the availability of such facilities as the Carpenter and Loeb Centers.

In the Social Sciences, some of the members of the committee were struck by the relative neglect of non-Western societies and cultures....

The major omission in the Social Sciences Area, however, was agreed to be in the field of the "systematic" or "behavioral" social sciences. Under these headings, we mean to include mainly the fields of economics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

These are fields linked together by their common search for regularities in human behavior, and by their analytic and qualitative as opposed to historical and qualitative approaches. They are fields that are relatively new in their present increasingly scientific form. They are fields, also that have a strong interest for our under-graduates because of their obvious bearing on many current issues facing both individuals and society....

Finally, in the Natural Sciences the committee was impressed not so much by the omission of particular areas of knowledge (though we did have some concern about the relatively small role of mathematics in the Program) as by the underemphasis on science in student electives....Roughly half the student at Harvard and Radcliffe take only one science course during their college years....There was agreement in the committee that the inadequate exposure to science of half our students represented a serious area of weakness in our present effort and that at least some attempt would have to be made to correct it.

...On the whole, it seemed fair to say that the Harvard Program has tended to give priority to the "classic" themes, achievements, and monuments of our past civilization. The historical has been prominent, in subject matter and often in approach.

IV

A Reformulation

The major task was to revise the basic content and organization of the Program for General Education so that it would:

1. Include important areas of knowledge not adequately represented in the present Program;

2. Introduce a greater variety of varying levels of preparation;

3. provide course sequences so that the option to pursue certain interests in greater depth would be available.

The existing Program is based upon a requirement of six and one-half courses, several of which may be departmental courses. We proposed to work within this frame work but to specify more clearly the limits under which departmental courses can be employed for General Education purposes.

Our solution...eventually came in recognizing that for the structure of General Education, the traditional three-way division of learning could be usefully replaced by a simpler division into two parts. For our purposes the line of division lay within the social sciences where the joining of history and the behavioral sciences has always left a visible seam.

Of course, the behavioral sciences and history have influenced each other in many ways. But from the standpoint of General Education, history, with its concern with the interaction of ideas and events, and the context of cultural development, stands closer to the humanities than to the behavioral sciences.

On the other hand the behavioral sciences share much, though by no means all, of the concern and the methodology of the natural sciences. Both seek to establish abstract regularities in the behavior of the objects they study and when possible they test their new insights by the success of their predictions.

There are, of course, areas within the behavioral sciences in which the scientific approach has not been particularly relevant or useful, and this must be kept clearly in view. Yet on balance we believe that at this time the behavioral sciences are more closely related to the natural sciences than to history, particularly in the attitudes and methods which deserve emphasis in General Education.

As a consequence of these considerations we propose that for the purposes of General Education the areas of relevant learning be simply divided between the Humanities, which in our usage will include history and the full range of subjects traditionally grouped under the humanities, and the Sciences, which will embrace natural science, mathematics and the behavioral sciences. This division is not advanced as the basis of a theory of knowledge: it is simply a device for effecting a Program of nondepartmental education within the constrains of the problem as we understand it.

Apart from the requirements within the Humanities and Sciences divisions, two courses will be reserved for further work either in elective courses offered in General Education or in departmental courses outside the student's field of concentration.

The purposes of this division, which we shall call General Education Electives, are twofold. First, we wish to preserve a place in the Program for courses by distinguished members of the Faculty without the requirement that they fit into either of the other two main divisions. Second, we wish to keep for the Committee on General Education a domain in which they can experiment with a new course offerings, for example in non-Western cultures and creative arts, that may not fit into the other divisions.

In our view departmental courses have a proper role to play in General Education. A controlled competition between the departmental and General Education courses can, on the whole, be mutually beneficial; though, of course, the options must not be such as to disrupt the coherence of the Program.

A more important reason lies in the diversity of attainment and interest among our students. No Program of General Education courses as such can be sufficiently comprehensive for their varied needs. Hence the possibility should be reserved for them to create from the richness of departmental offerings an alternative to a part, at least, of the courses offered in the Program. In making this provision, we wish to permit the use of departmental courses that lie clearly outside the student's field of concentration and areas related to it.

Operating Rules

Rule 1. Instruction in General Education will be grouped into two principal divisions, Humanities and Sciences, and a division consisting of Electives. Students will be required to take TWO full courses or their equivalents in each of the three divisions. In addition, a half-course in English Composition and proficiency in a foreign language will be required.

Rule 2. At least ONE of the courses in the Sciences must be in the Natural Science category; the other may also be in Natural Science (including mathematics), or it may be in the Behavioral Science category.

Rule 3. In both Humanities and Sciences divisions, TWO full departmental courses approved by the Committee on General Education, one of which is above the elementary level, may substitute for ONE General Education course. However, at least ONE General Education course that cannot count for concentration must be taken in each of the two divisions.

Rule 4. The TWO full courses required in the Electives division may be selected either from among the General Education Electives, or from among the General Education courses in Humanities and Sciences (to the limit of four for the entire Program), or from among departmental courses that cannot count for concentration.

Commentary on the Rules

The principal advantage of having only two major divisions, Humanities and Sciences, is that a two-course requirement can now be imposed in both areas....Thus a better-prepared student may choose a course that would be the second part of a two-course sequence for the less well prepared.

But while we propose the two divisions, Humanities and Sciences, as the basic units of the Program for General Education and see them as balancing and complementing each other, we do not see them as neatly symmetrical. They are different in important respects.

The Sciences division, unified by certain of the aims and procedures of the studies within it, is not meant to be a wholly integrated unit. For all the similarities between Natural Science and Behavioral Science, they remain significantly different in method and object of inquiry; and they are at different stages of development as disciplines.

We intend the distinction between them to be maintained, and Natural Science to have a special emphasis within the Program. Behavioral Science is made optional; Natural Science... is not optional, and it is not, in the proposed Program, made interchangeable with Behavioral Science.

We intend the opposite to characterize the development of the new Humanities area. We do not wish to introduce a central demarcation within it....We see the proposed Humanities area as a spectrum, spanning history, literature, and art. Far from introducing a break within this spectrum, we wish to place the weight of innovation precisely at the middle point where previously separated phenomena may now come together. The extremes will remain: a broadly conceived survey of Western history stressing economic phenomena should be no less welcome than a course in drama and the epic. Both examine vital aspects of our civilization's development and of the culture we inherit from that development. But we hope that the middle area, where literature and art, ideas and beliefs, may be analyzed in conjunction with social and political phenomena, will come alive and be the subject of experimentation in course offerings just as it has been the subject of scholarly investigation....Though we wish to retain the preeminence of Natural Science within the Sciences division, we also wish to introduce the systematic study of human behavior into the General Education Program and to do so in a way that allows for a gradual development of courses in this area specifically designed for General Education.

The third rule introduces greater flexibility into the General Education Program and permits the student to build up sequences of courses that have their origin in General Education courses....

It is, of course, essential to our conception that this substitution can only be used for one of the two required courses in Humanities and in Sciences. Thus the contact with each division through General Education offerings is maintained.

As for the phrase "approved by the General Education Committee," we do not mean by this to commit the Committee to the examination of the contents and conduct of every course in the catalogue and to the selection of a few specimens for its list. We intend only to give the Committee the power to exclude courses that are clearly inappropriate for General Education....

The student has very great freedom of choice in complying with Rule 4. He may, if he chooses, meet it by taking two departmental courses that cannot count for concentration in his field of study....

As an alternative the student may take one or two courses from those offered in the Humanities and Sciences divisions of General Education, provided he has taken three or two such courses, respectively, in fulfilling the requirements of these divisions. The restriction to a total of four General Education courses insures that students will experience the other options within the Program.

General Education Electives course will offer important opportunities under this rule. It was in part at least to assure a place in the curriculum, and sponsorship, for courses that are not normally offered by departments and that do not readily fit the specifications of Science or Humanities in General Education that Rule 4 was inserted....

We wish by this rule not only to make it possible for such courses to be offered by the College but also to stimulate the creation of non- or interdepartmental courses by providing a regular administrative home and funds for such experiments.

Before ending this commentary we would like to draw attention, again, to the need for cooperation from the departments if the use of departmental courses for General Education is to be effected by the device of allowing those courses to be taken "which cannot count for concentration."...

Since General Education in the proposed Program is to some extend defined by what the departments accept for concentration, departments that choose to define their fields more narrowly than they now do will, by thus increasing the specialized requirements within the field, make it possible for a student to take for General Education what he presently takes as related work within his field of concentration. The result in such cases may be an overall reduction in the range of the student's education....

Suggested Courses

The committee urges that if the proposed Program is adopted, the Committee on General Education should interest the new categories at the start with some latitude. We would like to see most of the existing courses in General Education continued, though in some cases under new headings and with minor renovation. The force of initial effort under the proposed new scheme should be placed on devising new courses that conform more closely to the new structure and on exploring its possibilities, rather than on ruling out the old. We would, however, expect that the transition from one Program to another would provide an occasion to drop courses that are believed to have served their usefulness.

The following suggestions on the design and content of new courses are offered with some diffidence, for this was not our major concern. Indeed the new Committee on General Education would have the heavy obligation during its first year of bringing together numerous faculty groups for the specific purpose of devising new courses.

1. Natural Science. Courses in Natural Science should continue to seek the objectives defined in the Bruner Report of 1959: to give the student both a "knowledge of the fundamental principles of a special science" and an idea of the methods of science as they are known today."...We do not wish to suggest undue emphasis on methodology: the scientific method in its many forms should continue to be taught primarily through the study of the substance of science. But we think an increase in the amount of laboratory work in General Education courses would deepen the student's awareness of the working reality of scientific endeavor. And we believe an increase in the weight of mathematics in the Program would elevate the level of accomplishment...

The role of mathematics should be examined at three levels. At the lowest level would be remedial mathematics designed to bring the student up to the level of those who have had four years of secondary school mathematics....

The second level would be in constructing a mathematics based course in General Education suitable for those with four years of secondary school mathematics, but viewed as a terminal course. This would provide limited work in analytic geometry, elementary calculus, probability, linear equations and linear programming....

The third level would lie in the possibility of devising two rather advanced courses: one based on calculus and the other on algebra and both oriented to applications at the expense of comprehensive coverage....

2. Behavioral Science. Devising proper General Education courses in Behavioral Science presents special problems, if only because the present General Education Program includes very few offerings in this area that may simply be transferred to the proposed new Program. Such General Education courses as there now are in the area of Behavioral Science we would hope would be carried over into the new Program. And there are certain other rather special possibilities in course offerings that seem rather obvious: we think particularly of the value of a course on cybernetics, information theory, feedback and control, and computers, which might be particularly attractive to concentrators in the Natural Sciences.

3. Humanities, Problems of the same dimension do not exist in the proposed new Humanities area since there already are appropriate courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences sections of the existing General Education Program. There is, however, a special challenge facing those who would construct courses at the center of the spectrum in this area, where literature and art, ideas and beliefs, may be seen in conjunction with social and political phenomena.

4. General Education Electives. General Education electives--courses sponsored by the Committee on General Education but not included in the basic categories of Sciences and Humanities--offer possibilities that could contribute substantially to the variety and attractiveness of the undergraduate curriculum.

By the very nature of this rubric, however, it is difficult to classify the possibilities that may be included within it, for it is by design a region where unorthodox teaching efforts may be located. But three types of courses that may reasonably be accommodated in this part of the curriculum appear to us to be particularly attractive.

a. The first and most obvious such group is that of courses given by persons of unique stature on subjects that transcend ordinary disciplinary boundaries. We have thought in this connection of Professor Tillich's courses in philosophy and theology which could well have been offered in certain departments of the Faculty but which fitted none neatly and yet were of great value to large numbers of undergraduates....

b. For some time during its deliberations the committee considered the possibility of recommending a requirement relating to the study of non-Western cultures. For while we emphatically endorse the Redbook's concern for acquainting students with the cultural inheritance of the Western World, we recognize also that no one who hopes to cope with the contemporary world can remain ignorant of the history and culture of the Far East, of the Middle East, of Latin America and of Africa...

c. We have thought, finally, in considering the possibility of General Education Electives, of the whole area of the creative and performing arts. We write this report at a time when the University is just beginning to tap the wealth of educational possibilities it acquired in the Carpenter and Loeb centers. In both of these places exciting experiments in forms of instruction are taking place, but the proper relation of work in the visual and dramatic arts to the regular curriculum of the College is still only vaguely seen. We would hope that some day every undergraduate would be able to extend his experience in college from the verbal to the non-verbal arts, from appreciating to creating, in ways that maintain something of the discipline of his efforts within the departments....5JOHN H. FINLEY, JR. '25