Discarding a Rotten Core

The much-anticipated curricular review proposals were released last Monday, calling for needed changes such as abolishing the Core curriculum, further emphasizing the sciences, and encouraging (or perhaps, even requiring) an international experience abroad. Many of the recommendations were expected, if not decades in the making; students have complained about several of the salient issues for years now. We support the curricular review’s general mission to counter a general trend towards specialization through relaxing requirements and broadening the benefits of a liberal arts education—the ability to reason in a variety of academic disciplines. Nevertheless, we question how well some of the committee’s particular proposals actually achieve that goal.

The Core’s proposed replacement provides for a good balance of Harvard’s strengths. Students may soon be able to fulfill their general education requirements through departmental courses in the broader subject areas of the humanities, social sciences, life sciences and physical sciences. Exemplary of the overarching goal to increase student choice, this move allows students to gain exposure to different subject areas by taking classes in the actual departments they are interested in—as opposed to the Core’s tendency to cram students into the least undesirable option from a limited list of mediocre courses. Meanwhile, the creation of Harvard College Courses demonstrates the College’s commitment to broad-based liberal arts education and provides students with even more options for satisfying requirements. The courses are designed to promote an interdisciplinary aspect of the curriculum that the Core so rarely achieves.

Likewise, we support the move to bring the natural and physical sciences up to par with the humanities and social sciences. For too long, science concentrators have been burdened with a disproportionate number of requirements outside their chosen field of study. Many of the Core areas overlap with non-science fields; whereas science concentrators are required to take three Literature and Arts courses, two Historical Study courses, one Moral Reasoning and one Foreign Cultures course. The newer, more equitable system is an acknowledgement that the hard sciences deserve just as prominent a position in the curriculum as the humanities and social sciences.

Not surprisingly, overhauling the general education requirements and expanding the ability of students to design their own academic programs necessitates reforms in many other areas of the curriculum including advising, teaching and the structure of concentrations. The curricular review touched on—with varying degrees of insight—the need to improve and streamline many of these aspects of undergraduate education.

The release of the committee’s report marks a new public phase in the curricular review, but this phase should be understood as a new beginning, not an end to the process. The committee’s recommendations for the Core are welcomed and should be embraced, but a successful, fundamental rethinking of Harvard’s undergraduate experience requires active processing and questioning of the committee’s recommendation. Beginning this week, The Crimson Staff will attempt to do just that and grapple with a number of the report’s most controversial proposals.