General Education Created to Teach Basic Knowledge

When General Education courses were created in 1946, faculty members expected the curriculum to eventually become mandatory for all students. But nowadays the only Gen Ed class everyone takes is Gen Ed 105, "The Literature of Social Reflection," taught by Agee Professor of Social Ethics Robert Coles '50 and widely considered one of Harvard's easiest classes.

General Education courses, established in May 1946, were envisioned as a broad overview of science and Western literature.

The General Education course structure was developed in 1945-46 under Benjamin F. Wright, chair of the Committee on General Education, who hoped to spawn a curriculum of mandatory "basic knowledge" courses in three areas: humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.

Classes offered in the fall of 1946 included an analysis of "classic texts from Homer to Shakespeare as the sources of a tradition in Western thought," a look at Greek epics and a survey of the evolution of the novel "from Don Quixote to War and Peace," according to Crimson articles on the subject.

Courses in Western civilization, political theory and biological science were also planned.

Today's General Education curriculum is divided among freshman seminars, which are restricted to first-years; house seminars, with strict enrollment limits; and a few general lecture courses, which are open to all students.

These courses can be taken only as electives. But they do offer a focused sampling of courses in multiple disciplines.

"It's like the grin of the Cheshire Cat--the cat's gone and only the grin is still here," says Anthony G. Oettinger '51, a member of the Committee on Non-Departmental Instruction. "It's a pale shadow compared to the heyday under [then-president James B. Conant '14]."

The Core's Influence

The days of focusing solely on the development of Western thought and civilization are long gone. Today's courses cover a much wider variety of topics, places and ideas.

Much of the change can be traced to the establishment of the Core Curriculum in 1979. The Core is divided into six categories--foreign cultures, literature and arts, historical studies, social analysis and science.

Students must take eight Core courses, usually ones unrelated to their fields of concentration, in order to graduate.

Core courses now offer the general, non-specialized classes which Wright hoped would characterize General Education, Oettinger says.

"Courses that would be aimed at people who were not specialists, I think, is a common thread with the Core," he says.

With its original role usurped by the Core curriculum, General Education took on an entirely new identity.

Lawrence Buell, dean of undergraduate education and chair of the Committee on Non-Departmental Instruction, says present General Education courses are those that "don't fall into departmental categories without prerequisities."

"Sort of an all-comers kind of course," Buell says. "This is sharply different from the old General Education, which was an integral part of the distribution system."

Since 1979, general education electives have evolved into offbeat courses that professors enjoy teaching.

The curriculum includes titles such as Gen Ed 103, "AIDS, Health and Human Rights"; Gen Ed 136, "Explaining the Holocaust and the Phenomenon of Genocide"; Adams 122, "Printed Books as a Field of Study"; and Quincy 121, "A History of Zoos."

Oettinger says the hodgepodge of classes makes for "strange bedfellows."

"It is no longer a coherent sampling across [academic areas] as it used to be," Oettinger says. "The coherence is that they're non-departmental."

Focused Electives

The 1946 Committee on General Education earmarked spots in all of its new courses for first-years and sophomores, with the hopes of adding advanced classes for juniors and seniors by 1949.

Two-fifths of all seats were reserved for incoming first-years, and another two-fifths were set aside for sophomores.

The remaining one-fifth were reserved for women attending Radcliffe.

A total of 410 students were allowed in the classes the first year they were offered, and students were required to fill out applications for consideration.

But because today's General Education classes count for neither concentration nor distribution credit, enrollment is open to all undergraduates.

Most professors and enrollees have a genuine interest in the subject, according to Oettinger, who says such a bond is the best part about the program.

"I've never had any student in my course who didn't want to be there," says Oettinger, who teaches Gen Ed 156, "The Information Age, Its Main Currents and Their Intermingling."

Usually about four General Education lectures, 10 house seminars and 40 freshman seminars are offered each year.

Lotteries are usually held for the seminars, since many students seek the chance to learn from professors in small-group settings.

Lectures, with their unlimited enrollment capacity, typically draw large crowds, too. About 800 students take Coles' class.

Buell says the fact the students take the courses despite their lack of concentration or distributional credit demonstrates their importance.

"Students [who] take these courses consider them a valuable enhancement to a Harvard education even if they aren't central to a course-of-study plan," Buell says. "It's not a large curriculum, but it seems to me it fills a significant need."