Faculty Watch Special Concentrations

FOR THOSE who are wondering whether the Faculty is serious about curriculum reform, the vote today on Special Concentrations may reveal their true feelings. Admittedly it seems unfair to read into the vote on a single proposal the Faculty's intentions concerning the general issue of curriculum reform. But since this is the first curriculum legislation to be put to a vote and, more important, since it will allow future changes to be responsive to real needs, Faculty watchers can justifiably make such an interpretation.

The Special Concentrations program would allow students with unusual academic interests to set up individual concentrations or honors programs outside established concentrations. The Faculty has discussed and then postponed the plan twice-once last May, then again October 20. Meanwhile, opponents have been building support to defeat the plan among Faculty conservatives as well as among political liberals in the elite concentrations (i.c., Social Studies) who are afraid the plan might dilute their status. Dean May has been active in the past two weeks assuring departmental meetings that the number of students involved in the program would be very small. This was not the intention of the Committee on Undergraduate Education, which did not want to create an elitist program.

One characteristic of the proposal is that neither radicals nor conservatives like it. Radicals (those who believe the educational system needs to be overhauled) object that Special Concentrations is such a minor change that it threatens to act as a concession which preserves a wholly inadequate system. Conservatives object that the program will increase the Faculty's advising responsibilities and require reallotment of some educational resources.

WHAT GOOD is it, then? For one thing, the legislation will create an important option that some students truly need. Moreover it will make future reform easier by showing what direction students want educational change to take. As students are allowed to structure their own programs according to their individual interests, those individual interests will become known-unlike now when only prescribed choices are available. And as the patterns of student interest diverge from the present departmental channels, the specific inadequacies of departmental organization will also become known.

In this way Special Concentrations will serve as a valuable indicator of the needs of students and the extent to which departments can meet these needs. Information and feedback of this sort is essential before major changes can be enacted or refused; it is impossible to design a grand plan in a vacuum. The Special Concentrations program is an experiment that will supply an objective picture of the current curriculum's flaws, undistorted by the rhetoric of the system's critics or defenders.

For those who fear that Special Concentrations will act as a concession and thus thwart any effort to overhaul Harvard according to some general plan-if Harvard does in fact need an overhaul-the inadequacies which the program will pinpoint will help determine what fundamental changes are needed. On the other hand, if the curriculum is actually healthy and does not need major alterations, then Special Concentrations will result in no more than the quiet accommodation of a few unconventional interests.

Any reluctance by the Faculty to accept this proposal may be seen as reluctance to obtain an accurate diagnosis of the present curriculum. And if the members of the Faculty are reluctant to find out what's ailing Harvard, we can rightly suppose that they have no intention of finding cures.