What Constitutes a Harvard Education
It would appear that Harvard is finally making some progress on its long-delayed curricular review: a committee of five professors is preparing a report of recommendations on general education, the most central aspect of the undergraduate review.
As the Crimson reports, "The report recommends replacing the Core’s 11 fields of study with three broader disciplines—Arts and Humanities, Study of Societies, and Science and Technology. Students would be required to take three courses in each of the two areas most distinct from their concentration."
I am underwhelmed. It took four years to say, well, let's just divide up the world of knowledge into three categories and make students take two courses from each? Truth is, any serious member of the Harvard faculty could have done that in about twenty minutes. It's not exactly rocket science.
What's interesting about this report—and to be fair, the Crimson saw only a draft—is the essential abdication of any educational philosophy. At least the Core, for all its flaws, had a view of the world, a sense of what a Harvard education was supposed to accomplish. A curriculum this broad, and this loosely structured, doesn't seem to have an opinion on anything, except perhaps that the Core is bad, and that Harvard students feel they labor under too many requirements.
Well, it's early yet; there's a long way to go with this curricular review. But is this really the best the finest minds in the nation can come up with?
