Charting a decisive middle-way between the Hundred Great Books extreme at St. John's and strict vocationalist preparation on the other side of the Education Axis, the College's General Education Program is, despite the condescension of the Hutchins coterie, an inherently original venture.. Like all pioneer endeavors it must experience trial-and-error evolution. The aim at Harvard is to provide all students "as citizens and heirs of a joint culture . . . a common core of knowledge": the aim is further to do this within the framework of modern needs for specialized training. Skeptics who have doubted that the Report's golden intentions can find effective translation into the College organism and outright ill-wishers who fear "educational tyranny" will unearth only fleeting surface encouragements--little in substance--for their case in the results of the Student Council's April poll of students in the eight trial courses.

What the Council has discovered is that while the fundamental spirit of General Education has met with ready welcome the attitude of first-year men toward specific questions poses knotty issues concerning the Program's actual future. 164 against 139 voted that GE courses should not be required in the College curriculum and should continue only under the present concentration-distribution structure. Consciously or not, such failure to support a mandatory universal program represents a real challenge to the central thesis of General Education. This is simply that in the thought and action of great men lies that "Western Tradition" which should reach every student in explicit fashion. By permitting the scrupulously tended GE courses to become another option of the undergraduate shopping for intellectual condiment, the underlying crucial purpose will slip away from sight. Similarly, the poll results show that an overwhelming number of men now in the courses feel increased enrollment in the section meetings will drastically lower instruction value. Will not the jump in size which must accompany extension of the Program to the entire body of Freshmen and Sophomores rob the courses of the top quality they have boasted this year! Despite the fact that the number of sections might increase and the intimate scale thus hold fast, the present practice of professors meeting in person with section groups would necessarily come to an end.

Through the complex of unanswered dilemmas the basic reality of successful preliminary experiment nevertheless persists. General Education confidently stretches its wings and should shortly straighten up to fly right. Majority opinion declared the courses had lived up to expectations of the new concept; two thirds found more interest than elsewhere in the College; and half claimed greater worth for the time spent than that offered by any other courses. Substitution of essays for hour exams and quizzes won emphatic praise. Furthermore, the dstinctive, approach outlined for GE courses from the start has been upheld: that brief coverage of numerous topics within a subject must give way to more thorough treatment of strategic considerations. Here the object is to illustrate the nature of the problems in a particular field and suggest possible methods of solution through the presentation of carefully-selected segments of knowledge. In vindicating the heart-matter of the General Education proposals the response of the first-year men points in the final analysis to successful resolution of current mechanical quandaries. The skeptics and ill-wishers will be lonely indeed within the coming half-decade. For the College moves surely forward to harmonious compromise with the demands of breadwinning and of enlightened citizenship.