Keeping the Core From Rotting

THE CORE CURRICULUM stands a chance of degenerating into a collection of aging, uninspired courses that appear in the catalogue every year only because they were there the year before. But if the new curriculum does not meet expectations, Faculty members and students working on the program won't be solely to blame. Rather, the pride and stubbornness of professors teaching in the Core could turn the program into a clone of its predecessor, General Education.

One of the problems with Gen Ed, according to the Core's founders, was that it lacked specific standards for the courses offered under its aegis. The Core has taken care of that, much to the dismay of some students and Faculty members, by setting goals for courses in each of the program's ten divisions. The Core committees, which review potential courses, have for the most part taken seriously their role as enforcers of those guidelines, rejecting some suggestions outright and sending others back to professors for extensive revision. In the Core's first year, "a number of proposals--including many excellent courses--failed to gain approval because they clearly did not fit the guidelines," Dean Rosovsky wrote in a 1979 report on the Core.

But prior scrutiny constitutes only one-half of the Core review process; the program must have some method for insuring that professors and course material don't become stale. Under Gen Ed, even the most stimulating professors often became unexciting after teaching the same material year after year. Despite its guidelines, the Core runs the same risk.

The people working on the Core--for whom the tattered Gen Ed program should serve as an example of what not to do--know they must develop some method for keeping tabs on courses once they become part of the program. What they remain uncertain about is exactly how to do that. So far, each of the Core's five subcommittees has been allowed to use whatever method it likes for evaluating the courses offered under its authority--with varied success.

Most subcommittees have tried to encourage their members to visit classes and then report back on what they see. It has not worked very well. "Classroom visitations by subcommittee members were not uniformly carried out. Relatively few took place; one subcommittee balked at the idea of visiting colleagues' classrooms," Edward T. Wilcox, director of General Education and secretary to the Standing Committee on the Core, wrote in a report earlier this fall. "There was no systematic scheme for reporting back to the Standing Committee," he continued.

Resistance to the idea of professors evaluating professors--something unheard of at Harvard--stands as a major stumbling block to creating a functioning evaluation system for the Core, several members of Core committees admit privately. A simple solution, it seems, would be to tell professors who want to teach in the Core that if they don't like the thought of their colleagues evaluating them then they should not be part of the Core.

That attitude, however, creates a political problem for the subcommittees, which are trying desperately this year to encourage Faculty members to teach in the Core. Because the program has not reached its course goal and because professors are not clamoring to get into the Core, the program cannot afford to lose offerings. Therefore, many subcommittee members believe that initiating a strict evaluation process now would be a mistake.

UNTIL THE CORE is fully implemented, it may prove prudent for the subcommittees to refrain from imposing themselves on professors teaching Core courses. But what's politic is not always what's right. The people working on the Core have an obligation to create a standardized method for regularly reviewing offerings in the program. Establishing student-Faculty committees to evaluate courses in each of the five Core areas and then report their findings would prove workable and beneficial. But no system will work without the cooperation of professors teaching in the Core. For the sake of the program and students taking courses in it, they must learn to swallow their pride and accept some constructive criticism.