In-Core-porate Department Courses

SHOPPING period is over, and you're settled into your classes. There are probably three courses you really want to take and then that omnipresent ball and chain around the leg of the Harvard student, the Core you know you need.

In four years, all students are required to give up one quarter of their courses to the Core. It is a travesty that so much of the undergraduate experience is limited to the often luke-warm Core offerings.

If departmental offerings did count for the Core, students could feast at a smorgasbord of courses instead of grinding by on the thin gruel of Core selections. After dealing with brackets, fall/spring course distinctions and scheduling conflicts, the current Core menu becomes very weak indeed.

True, such a move would force the administration to give up its pretense that Core courses promote different modes of intellectual inquiry that the department courses do not. This, not the acquisition of a body of facts, is the philosophy behind the Core. But who would actually say that upper-level classes cannot provide this exposure?

Many departmental offerings incorporate the same methods of learning that Core courses do. Professors may not spend half a lecture explaining their method of analysis in a higher-level class, but the concepts are there and are being applied--at least as much as in any Core class.

Core offerings are often appropriate for someone learning the material--and how to look at it--for the first time. But some students come to the Core already comfortable with certain disciplines. Rather than forcing them to learn the basics over again, they could be allowed to take a higher level class in the same subject area that gives them a chance to use what they already know.

CONSIDER the perennial fall Core favorite, "Justice." Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel takes a hoard of students on a dizzying flight through categorical and consequentialist reasoning, from politics based on independent standards of right to home-grown community justice. It is a worthwhile trip, but not a unique one. Upper level political philosophy courses also serve as a window into the conflict between the right and the good. Achieving harmony between our roles as citizens and as people is not a question that begins and ends in Moral Reasoning 22.

Another big draw in the Core is Historical Studies A-12, "International Conflicts in the Modern World." Here the emphasis is on using the lessons of history, thinking in time and concocting cogent recipes of theory and historical fact. Very noble aims. That's why the same techniques are similarly emphasized in upper level courses in comparative politics. Learning the lessons of history is as useful a tool when studying the French Revolution as it is in the international conflicts of A-12.

The Core course experience is simply not that different from taking departmental courses--just a little easier in most cases. Don't take my word for it, ask the English, Economics, Government, and East Asian Studies Departments. They all accept Core courses for concentration credit. If Core offerings did in fact focus exclusively on how you learn rather than what you learn, then the departments--which are more concerned with mastering bodies of knowledge--would not accept Cores for degree credit. But they do, and it should be a two-way street.

THE administration's weak position in maintaining distinctions between upper-level and Core courses in particuliar areas withers under the rational objectivity of science. In physics, chemistry and biology, departmental offerings do count for Core credit--even though the differences between Core and department offerings are more striking than in any other discipline.

Consider the yawning gap in emphasis between empirical, lab-oriented Chem 10 and the papers-only Science A offering, "Time, Space and Motion."

Now consider that "Justice" and Government 1061, a modern political theory course, 1) share reading selections and 2) both profess to investigate modern liberalism. Yet the departmental offering will not satisfy you Core requirement. Ridiculous? Absolutely.

The science departments were not snowed by the Core philosophy. But the liberal arts--always more susceptible fluffy educational experiments--were taken in and students are losing out.

It's time to rescue those students trapped for too much of their precious college years in the first 44 pages of the Course catalog. Expanding Core credit to certain upper-level classes would also improve the quality of life for those who elected to stick with the Core offerings. While those well-versed in a field could take more satisfying upper-level options, novices in a particuliar area would not have to deal with irritating pedants in section.

Harvard should abandon the pretentious and lame distinction between Core courses and the rest of the curriculum. Students deserve more opportunity to explore the rich departmental offerings. Right now, fulfilling requirements is just a chore.