Core Series Created a 'Straw Man'

The Crimson's recent expose in the Core program quoted me in an effort to typify the problem of grade inflation (the so-called "Soft Core") and the lack of teaching fellow training.

Since the sound bites your reporter extracted were used to represent point precisely opposite to the ones I was advancing, I feel it is my moral responsibility--and your--to set the record straight.

Early in the semester I told your reporter that most of my students were receiving grades in the A-/B+range. contrary to The Crimson's assertion I did not predict that this would be the ultimate disposition of the grades. Harvard Undergraduates are relative. adept at writing two page response papers and--thanks, no doubt, to the Expository Writing Program--most students in my section have acquired this skill. But the real trick is to demonstrate a comprehensive grasp of the course material.

In contrast most humanities courses at Harvard, the Core Programs requires this kind of a demonstration with both a midterm and a final examination. Ever since the Historical Studies A-38, the range and the majority or students are not in the A-/B+ range.

Regarding the degree to which graduate students are prepared to serve as Teaching Fellows in the core, I referred to the variety of pedagogical opportunities my colleagues and I have enjoyed at Harvard and I enumerated them for your reporter.

These include: directing junior tutorials and senior theses; teaching in several departments; teaching at other liberal arts colleges; serving as writing fellows through the Bok Center for Teaching and learning; participating in foundation-sponsored symposia focusing upon the art of college-level teaching; and meeting on a bi-weekly basis with our core course professor in order to discuss specific teaching-related matters. Your reporter asked me about the "new teaching techniques" that were outlined in a manual from the Core office.

My point was not (as your quote suggests) that such manuals are irrelevant; my point was that Harvard's resources for TFs extend far beyond a mere manual. If the manual were the only resource available to TFs, the Core program would be in trouble indeed. But Clearly that is very far from the case.

If my interview experience is at all typical of the way your investigation was conducted, I must conclude that your reporters were grasping at straws. I suspect that my comments and those of many other interviewees were grossly distorted in order to articulate a preconceived contempt for the Core program.

Of course, with sufficient straw one can construct a straw person-and this, it seems to me, The Crimson has succeeded in doing. But only random crows would mistake your inert fabrication for something real or substantial. Theodore Trost   Teaching Fellow,   Historical Studies A-38