Complete Text of New Proposal for Gen Ed

This program, drawn up at the instigation of Giles Constable '50, associate professor of History, as an alternative to the Doty Committee Report, will be introduced at today's Faculty meeting. 22 Faculty members had a hand in its drafting, although no all of them support all of its provisions. In addition to Constable they are Rogers G. Albritton, professor of Philosophy; Bernard Bailyn, professor of History; Walter Jackson Bate, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of the Humanities; Garrett Birkhoff, professor of Pure and Applied Mathematics; Reuben Brower, professor of English; Brice Chalmers, Gordon McKay professor of Metallurgy; J. Peterson Elder, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; H. Stuart Hughes, professor of History; Carl Kaysen, Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy; Mrs. Wilma Kerby-Miller, Academic Vice-President of Radcliffe; Harold C. Martin, Lecturer on Comparative Literature; Robert G. McCloskey, professor of Government; Edwin E. Moise, James Byrant Conant Professor of Education and Mathematics; Leonard K. Nash, Professor of Chemistry; Francis M. Rogers, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures; Arthur Smithies, Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy; George Wald, professor of Biology; Edward T. Wilcox, Director of Advanced Standing; Morton G. White, professor of Philosophy; and Robert Lee Wolff, professor of History.

The following proposals have been drawn up in the belief that at the present stage of the debate over General Education, it is necessary to consider some alternative to the plan presented in the report of the committee chaired by Professor Doty. We have assumed on the basis of the votes already taken in the Faculty that the General Education program will include an offering of General Education courses and a requirement to take some courses (but not necessarily General Education courses) outside the department of concentration. In order to work out a set of rules to put such a program into effect, we have broken down the problem into a series of questions. To each of these we have proposed an answer. A glance at these will give the reader a quick idea of the sort of requirements we have in mind. The entire proposal does not depend upon any single answer, however, and each question should be considered separately:

(1) the number of courses required outside the field of concentration,

(2) the division of courses into areas (as distinct from fields or departments),

(3) the distribution of the courses outside the field of concentration,

(4) the type of course required outside the field of concentration,

(5) when these must be taken.

(1) In both the existing program and that proposed in the Doty Report, students are required to take six courses (twelve half-courses), in various combinations, to satisfy the General Education requirements. In practice this adds up to no more than four courses outside the area of the department of concentration. Since in fact some distribution within the area of concentration is more or less assured by the fact that many departments require, and nearly all allow, their concentrators to take some courses related to their field, the purpose of the requirement could be achieved, and its administration simplified, by ruling that:

(2) We are of the opinion that the division into three areas (possibly renamed Humanities, Sciences, and Social Studies) should be kept in place of the two-area division proposed in the Doty Report.

(3) The distribution of the required courses outside the area of concentration raises in effect the question of a science requirement, since experience shows that whereas science majors are usually happy to take courses outside their area, non-scientists are often reluctant to take any science. If the division into three areas and the requirement of four courses outside the area of concentration are accepted, the alternatives before the Faculty are to permit a free distribution (thus allowing students to take all four courses in only one outside area or to require either one or two courses in each area. We believe that the wisest plan is that:

Thus a student may divide his four "outside' courses either two-and-two or three-and-one and can, if he wishes, pursue his interests in one area more deeply than in the other.

(4) The knottiest problem before the Faculty is the type of courses which will fulfill the General Education requirement. Four possible solutions have been suggested:

(A) to allow students to satisfy the requirement by any courses in the Catalogue (excepting elementary language courses and Air, Naval, and Military Science), duly divided into areas (the Constable proposal), perhaps with the proviso, suggested by Professor Birkhoff, that students were expected, but not required, to meet the requirement with courses labelled General Education.

(B) to limit the courses by which a student may fulfill the requirement to a list of what will be called here "designated" courses, including both General Education and some departmental courses (the Brower proposal).

(C) to allow more credit in meeting the requirement to General Education than to departmental courses, either on a 1-to-15 or on a 1-to-2 ratio: thus a student could meet the requirement by taking either one-and-a-half or twice as many departmental as General Education courses (the Kaysen proposal).

(D) to adopt plan B but to allow a student with special abilities, interests, or preparation to petition for approval of a special program to fulfill the requirement (the Chalmers proposal).

Objections can be raised to each of these proposals. Under A, although it avoids the difficulty of having to distinguish strictly between General Education and departmental courses, students might include some very narrow departmental courses in their General Education programs. B is sure to be arbitrary and hard to administer, assuming that a decision has to be made on every course in the Catalogue. C accepts in principle that General Education courses are distinctive and superior to departmental courses. D, in addition to the problems of B, allows only as an exception a type of program which for many students should be the rule.

Since it is true, however, that General Education courses, especially on the elementary level, are more frequently broad and self-contained than departmental courses and are therefore more suitable for nonconcentrators, it should be possible to combine these proposals in such a way as to give preference to General Education and some other courses but still allow flexibility and consideration for the programs of individual students. Under this arrangement, the requirement of four "outside" courses would be divided so that two must be selected from the designated list or replaced by nondesignated courses at a 1-to-15 ratio; the other two might be either General Education or departmental courses. The designated list would include lower-level General Education courses and other broad introductory courses approved by the General Education Committee. The difficulty of compiling the list would be reduced (a) by keeping it comparatively short and (b) by putting the initiative in the hands of the departments and instructors, who could propose courses to the Committee for inclusion on the list and would have to justify their proposals. Both the Committee and the departments and instructors would thus be expected to keep their respective needs and standards in mind in planning these courses. The resulting list would include a variety of courses (and perhaps also half-courses) in each area and would serve as a guide to introductory courses suitable for nonconcentrators. It would not be a strait jacket, and students who wished or were able to take more varied or advanced courses would be allowed either to substitute three nondesignated half-courses for each designated course (or two half-courses) or to petition for a special program.

Patterns of suitable programs would doubtles emerge from petitions over the years, but special consideration might be given to programs showing extensive precollege or independent work in areas outside the field of concentration and also, perhaps, to advanced study of difficult second languages.

(5) So few students coming to Harvard and Radcliffe seem to know their own abilities and long-range interests that it seems essential to expose them to a variety of subjects and methodologies early in their college careers. The requirements arising out of this and the previous question would therefore run as follows:

At least two designated or three nondesignated half-courses in each outside area must be completed by the end of the sophomore year. The other two courses outside the area of concentration may be either General Education or departmental courses (excepting elementary language courses and Air, Military, and Naval Science) and may be taken at any time. A petition for an individual program to fulfill the General Education requirement may be presented to the Committee by a student after completion of his first year in college and in consultation with his adviser.

The above five questions deal directly with the required courses outside the area of concentration; and our proposals add up to a somewhat simplified and liberalized version of the present plan. These seem to us, however, to meet only a part of the needs of a General Education program at Harvard Today. The real needs lie in the area of teaching, not of curiculum, and will never be met by a system of course requirements. More attention must be given to the teaching of individuals and small groups where the student learns at the same time to think and to express himself in speech and writing. This is the aim of General Education Ahf and of most of the new developments in undergraduate education adopted by the Faculty in the past ten years, such as Freshman Seminars, Independent Study, and the sectioning of large departmental courses.

The General Education program must therefore be aimed not exclusively, or even principally, at broadening the range of knowledge, but even more at its proper use and expression. This problem must in the future be studied both broadly and in detail, but the following four points need to be considered now in order to make the General Education course-requirement an integral part of our undergraduate education:

(6) the relation of the General Education course-requirements to other undergraduate programs,

(7) the need for a more effective system of student advising,

(8) relating General Education requirements to concentration requirements,

(9) composition, organization, and authority of the General Education Committee made its mandate from the Faculty.

(6) The relation of the General Education course-requirements to other undergraduate programs. Advanced Standing students in particular constitute a major loophole in the existing program and tend to give it the character of an elementary, not to say remedial, requirement, to be avoided if possible. We propose that these students should be required in the future to fulfill the requirements like other students but that they and advanced placement students be allowed (a) to use their awards for pre-college work as the equivalents of nondesignated depart- mental courses in meeting the requirements and (b) to present petitions for individual programs taking their special preparations into account. The relation to the General Education requirements of Freshman (and possible upperclass) Seminars and of Independent Study outside the area of concentration needs further study.

(7) The need for a more effective system of student advising has been stressed by several members of the Faculty and is becoming increasingly urgent as more and more students with varied backgrounds and preparations come to Harvard and Radcliffe. The student should still be responsible for working out his individual program, but if he is to take full advantage of the educational opportunities offered here, there must be a group of experienced and competent advisors whose duties are not restricted exclusively to the freshman year or to the signing of study cards and who consider advising part of their regular duties. Radcliffe has already adopted a system equating advising of freshmen to regular teaching responsibilities. The possibility might be considered of combining advising with small group teaching (as in the Freshman Seminars, where the teacher often knows the academic needs and interests of the students better than a non teaching advisor), of the regular advising of sophomores, and of established departmental advisers.

(8) In regulating General Education requirements, the Faculty should also bear in mind concentration requirements. In departments which require tutorial (counting as two courses), distribution among departmental courses, and a General Examination, students are often in effect forced to take more courses in or related to their field than are officially required. The problem is especially acute for students studying languages needed in their field of concentration or taking independent study or extra 98's and 99's, where the increased flexibility in one direction has made voluntary distribution of courses increasingly difficult, owing to the practical necessity of still taking a certain number of courses within their department of concentration. The establishment of specific requirements for concentration must of course remain in the