Constable to Offer New Gen Ed Plan

Giles Constable '50, associate professor of History, said yesterday that he is preparing a new proposal on General Education which he hopes to present at the February Faculty meeting.

"Someone had better make an effort to draw up some definite proposals," he said.

Constable, who has been the strongest advocate of allowing departmental courses to be substituted for Gen Ed offerings, declined to describe his plan in detail until he has checked with other members of the Faculty "who share my doubts about the Doty Report." However, he admitted having "one or two new suggestions."

He stressed that his report will be less of an effort to say anything new than a "portmanteau" proposal gathered from the various phases of the Gen Ed debate. "Obviously," he added, "one man can't do in three weeks what nine men took more than a year to prepare."

Compromise

Constable believes the Faculty's final decision will be a compromise between Gen Ed and departmental offerings and that the recent "negative votes on whether Gen Ed should be required or not" offer no concrete alternatives to the Doty Report.

"We need to get specific alternatives that will tell where the Faculty's approval lies rather than shoe-horning general proposals through by a seven-man majority," Constable said. He was referring to last Tuesday's 94-37 vote that undergraduates be allowed to take departmental courses to satisfy their Gen Ed requirements.

Constable said that he thought the compromise would be similar to one of three ideas that have emerged from the debate. They are:

* The suggestion made by Carl Kaysen, Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, that Gen Ed courses be given a weighted preference over departmental offerings.

* Constable's proposal that Gen Ed and departmental offerings be freely interchangeable on a 1-1 basis.

* The suggestion that the Committee on General Education draw up a broad list of courses which could be substituted for Gen Ed offerings.

Constable added that he knows of no other Faculty member presently working on a new Gen Ed plan although "other men are thinking along the same lines I am."

"I never intended to call my proposals a plan until people kept referring to it as 'The Constable Plan.' Then I decided I'd better have one," he said.