The Distribution Requirement

A fatigued and dispirited Faculty will meet once again, tomorrow, to discuss general education. As a government professor said yesterday, "this debate has generated into a confusing, and very boring, circus." From a distance, of course, the debate has seemed anything but boring. Tempers have flared; grandiose schemes have been hatched; coalitions have formed and dissolved. But the hoopla and intrigue have been wholly unreal, for the debate has completely by-passed the real issues. No one has seriously attacked the central questions: What does "general" mean in the 1960's? Why do so few top-flight professors want to teach Gen Ed courses? Why do students so often despise the courses and refuse to attend the sections and lectures?

Instead, the debate has swirled about mechanical issues concerning the administrative details of the program. Some blame belongs to the Doty Committee, which issued a report that said little about the real problems and promises of the Gen Ed Program. But the Faculty itself has been equally unwilling to tackle the genuine questions.

No one expects that tomorrow's meeting will be any more exciting or meaningful than those of past weeks. With the Doty Report out of the way, the Faculty will simply move on to the supremely mechanical and peripheral issues embodied in the first section of the Constable Proposal. And, for many professors and most students, this will prove boring indeed.

'Some' Importance

It would be a shame, however, if boredom obscured the fact that tomorrow's meeting does have some importance. Even having restricted itself to purely administrative issues, the Faculty still must decide on a "strong" or a "weak" Gen Ed program. To those who once hoped for a wholly fresh and vitalized program, this choice seems rather mundane. But to future students, the choice is crucial. It deserves close attention.

The decisions break rather cleanly into two areas: the requirements issue and the Gen Ed Committe issue. The first concerns the pattern of extra-departmental courses each student must take. The second concerns the administrative organ that will determine the details of that pattern. If the Faculty resolves the issues reasonably, a sound and worthwhile program may still emerge from this debate.

The Requirements Issue

By a very narrow straw-vote margin, the Faculty decided at a pre-Christmas meeting not to require Gen Ed courses. We hope this decision will be reversed tomorrow. There exists only two alternatives to the requirement, and both are unsatisfactory. First, the Faculty could permit totally free course selection. This system was tried under President Lowell and simply didn't work. Today, the system would be even less satisfactory. Increased competition for departmental honors would force many unsure students to take all or most of their courses in their field of concentration. In short, removing the burden of distribution will almost surely increase the unofficial burden of concentration.

The second alternative is to require a pattern of distribution without specifying a list of extra-departmental courses suitable for distribution. This would be a senseless system. It would assume, for instance, that courses in econometrics and history are equally satisfactory means of broadening the educational horizons of Nat Sci concentrators. The Constable' Proposal's variation on this system--to permit free substitution of departmental for Gen Ed courses at a 2 to 1 or 1.5 to 1 ratio--would be little better. It is impossible to recreate the impact and advantages of a Gen Ed course simply by accumulating an arbitrary number of arbitrarily selected departmental courses. The difference between Gen Ed and departmental courses is qualitative, not quantitative.

Admittedly, some present departmental courses would serve well as Gen Ed courses. Economics 1, Fine Arts 13, and Music 1 are obvious examples. But to extrapolate from these isolated examples and declare all departmental courses fit for distribution purposes is illogical.

This is not to say that every student must secure his liberal education through the formal Gen Ed program. Occasionally a particularly well-prepared or imaginative freshman will be able to construct his own distribution program, composed entirely of departmental courses. Such programs, if legitimate, will reflect a keen sense of the qualitative meaning of general education rather than a cynical skill for manipulating ratios. The Gen Ed Committee should not only accept such programs; it should encourage them. And it should provide interested freshman with special advisors to help outline and coordinate the programs.

The Committee Issue

A strong Gen Ed Program requires a strong Gen Ed Committee, a committee with the money and bargaining power to draw good teachers into the program. The Doty Report proposed that the Committee be authorized to siphon 10 per cent of each department's teaching time into the program and that teachers of Gen Ed courses be granted more frequent sabbatical leaves. This is a sound and necessary proposal. Having rejected the bulk of the Report, however, the Faculty seems anxious to dispose of it too. Presumably, the proposal's critics will argue its unfairness. Should the Economics Department, they will ask, be required to contribute 10 per cent of its teaching time when it is also offering Economics I--a course considered an adequate substitute for a regular Gen Ed course?

Surely provision can be made for such exceptions without relieving other departments of their responsibilities, and without leaving the Gen Ed program permanently understaffed.