Ford to Head Teaching Committee; Group Will Investigate Techniques

Dean Ford announced yesterday that a new ten-man Committee on Instruction will be established next year, and that he will be its chairman.

The committee will investigate the applicability to Harvard of new teaching techniques. It will be a joint committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of Education, and Theodore R. Sizer, Dean of the Faculty of Education, will serve as vice-chairman.

Ford gave several examples of possible areas of investigation for the committee. He mentioned incentives for teaching fellows in languages, and the relationship of language laboratories to teaching in sections; ways in which teaching machines and other means of "self-instruction" could be used more extensively, and uses for closed-circuit television.

Ford explained some possible uses of educational TV: "It might be possible to televise Med School experiments to classes in biology, or rehearsals in the Loeb to a class reading Moliere."

"We're certainly not suggesting that we are going over to technique rather than substance in teaching at Harvard," Ford explained, "but there are many areas, especially in elementary courses, where new techniques would be useful.

"But we are definitely not going in for, say, programmed instructions as an end in itself," he added.

Sizer said he thought the committee's investigations might help teaching at the School of Education. "There are other ways of teaching besides just standing up and lecturing to people," he said, "and some of them may perhaps be better. One of the best known courses at the Ed School--William Perry's course on counseling--is taught almost entirely by tapes."

Besides Ford and Sizer, the committee's members include Dwight Le M. Bolinger, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures; Edwin E. Moise, James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Mathematics; Douglas Porter, assistant professor of Education and the University's director of Programmed Instruction; David E. Purpel, assistant professor of Education and acting director of the Master of Arts in Teaching program; and William G. Perry, director of the Bureau of Study Counsel.

Also on, the committee are Arthur D. Trottenberg '48, assistant dean of the Faculty for resources and planning and a member of the University Committee on Educational Television; and Dean K. Whitla, director of the Office of Tests, who will act as the committee's secretary.