Starting

THE Ed School Faculty's dramatic program to up-date and expand its involvement with urban problems is an encouraging start at making the School's activities more relevant to the urban crisis. But the Faculty should avoid too much self-congratuation. While its vote represented Harvard's first positive reaction to last week's urban explosion, crucial gaps remain in the sweeping proposals for reform.

The Faculty vote left no doubt of the School's concern with the ghetto's agony. The decision to recruit minority group students showed a realistic appraisal of the way the Ed School can best meet the city's needs: producing trained minority group professionals who can lead their communities to independence and self-respect. In voting to pay for the education of the new students out of their own pockets, the Faculty made an extraordinary gesture, and underlined the urgency of the crisis.

As advocates of the recruiting plan argue, the Ed School also stands to gain from an influx of disadvantaged students. Minority group students bring with them a gut comprehension of the problems of their communities, and the Ed School cannot hope to function effectively in its urban training or research until it has the benefit of their perspective.

But 20 to 30 minority group students hardly fulfill the Ed School's responsibility to the ghetto, nor can they sufficiently sensitize a School of 800. Money problems may temporarily prevent the recruitment of more students, but the arguments of unrecognized competence and unique perspective--now used to justify seeking out students--apply at the Faculty level. Until the Ed School starts hiring black and Puerto Rican Faculty, it will not be meeting its obligation to the cities or to itself.

Besides the change in admissions policy, the Faculty voted a moratorium on classes as a first step in reforming its urban-related curricula. Curriculum reform is important: the Ed School has a responsibility to make sure it provides teachers with a good grasp of ghetto realities. But the Ed School could produce more as well as better teachers for ghetto classrooms by recruiting white students interested in urban teaching.

The School of Education has made a start, but no more. Reforms that looked drastic yesterday are inadequate today.