"Gen Ed," the term that dominates talk of Harvard education, was probably coined by some freshman or sophomore ten years ago. He used the phrase to name an experimental program that offered eight courses to 459 students that year.

General Education, the idea that controls Harvard education, has a longer history, reaching back into the administrations of Lowell and Eliot, but it was given meaning for current generations at Harvard in 1943 when President Conant appointed a University Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society. That Committee produced a book, and the book produced a program of education that gave new significance to the ideas of electives, concentration, and distribution.

Gen Ed has succeeded quite well since then. Several thousand students have now received a sub-lethal dose of a few great books and some impressive ideas. They not only exchange them at cocktail parties, but also sit up for hours in Holworthy or Matthews arguing about them. Those early-morning hours are when Gen Ed succeeds most of all.

Gen Ed is a part of the Harvard experience which especially tries the student. Lecturers and section men cannot ruin most of this material; the laggard student fools only himself with that excuse. Here the freshman is first put to the test of how well he will use a Harvard education--the test of whether he can bring some enthusiasm of his own to a book, instead of expecting the book, and a Ph.D. explicator, to do everything for him.

Varities of Gen Ed

The practice of Gen Ed is not yet past childhood, though, and it certainly has not solved every problem--partly because it is young, and partly because it is so many different things:

Broad, lower-level courses which introduce the student to an area of knowledge.

A diverse assortment of upper-level courses on many topics, with little in common but a generally high quality of teaching, perphas the most meaningful bond of all.

For freshmen, Gen Ed also means a writing course which will never be too much fun, though it tends increasingly to teach them how to write.

For upperclassmen, Gen Ed is also a plan of distribution, a vague set of signposts suggesting where to scatter some courses outside one's major field.

And Gen Ed is, basically, a philosophy of education, whose aim President Conant outlined thus in 1943:

The primary concern of American education today is not the development of the appreciation of the 'good life' in young gentlemen born to the purple. It is the infusion of the liberal and humane tradition into our entire educational system. Our purpose is to cultivate in the largest number of our future citizens an appreciation of both the responsibilities and the benefits which come to them because they are Americans and are free.

This concern underlies General Education at Harvard, and its sense of national mission shines through the legendary "red book," General Education in a Free Society, the committee report whose publication in 1945 brought this concept to Harvard education.

This an essay on that concept, particularly on how it has worked and failed at Harvard. It cannot yet be assessed in relation to all American education, though it seems to have a widening impact on schools and colleges in the nation.

The basic aims have not changed much since 1943, but they seem all the more vital today in a post-war America that seems content with Herman Wouk or Anne Morrow Lindbergh as culture, or will sit by quietly as it is told that nuclear radiation is a) dangerous, b) harmless, c) over its head, or d) none of its business.