This is the chief problem for General Education today, but there are other issues which must be faced.

The depth of the lower-level Humanities and Social Sciences is one problem. These courses have undeniable impact, for their reading lists are scarcely surpassed in the University and they are usually very well taught. But some people wonder if they do not try to do too much, to read too many books. Except Humanities 6, the lower-level Humanities courses read no fewer than eleven great books in a year, and often quite a few more.

General Education in a Free Society showed concern on this point:

There must be time for reflection or the familiarity will remain too verbal ... Probably,... a course which chose eight great books would be trying to do too much. A list from which a selection would be made might include Homer, one or two of the Greek tragedies, Plato, the Bible, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy.

This is a problem that interests President Pusey, too. The matter of "reading in depth" was an important part of General Education at Lawrence College, where he taught a section of the required course on five or six "great books" during his presidency there. "You can't examine a text," he complains, "if simply getting through the number of pages exhausts you." Owen shares this concern, and one instructor recently suggested that a Gen Ed course might profitably take up only one or two books a term, delving into them for every possible meaning.

This might prove to be extreme, for not many section men could keep a single book exciting for eight weeks, even if the lecturer could. Yet the idea is an important one, and something could probably be done to relieve the sense of frantic pressure a freshman feels when handed a Humanities 3 or Social Sciences 5 reading list. Each of these courses is taught well, generally, and they are popular with students, but much of the time spent in sections is devoted to explaining the books which were hastily read if read at all.

With these exceptions, the lower-level courses fulfill their function very well, for all but the exceptionally prepared freshmen who come to Harvard already generally educated in Western culture, ethical and political For a fairly large number from Eastern prep schools, these courses add little to the student's already generous background.

Without analyzing individual courses, it seems fair to say that the educational means employed are perfectly suitable, once the validity of a lecture-system is admitted. All sorts of variations in the lecture-section pattern exist.

Teachers at such institutions as Co- lumbia may insist that discussions are better than lectures, but they unwittingly assume that all discussions will be as good as the best ones. This cannot be, and a bad discussion is probably worse than a bad lecture, for one cannot read a good book in a bad section meeting, and (his) attendance is often enforced by punitive quizzes.

The Committee's second group courses are less certain in purpose. Some, like "Classics of the Christian Tradition," clearly cut or ignore departmental lines. Many others, especially the history courses under Social Sciences, could just as easily be given by a department. Originally these courses were meant as an integral part of the distribution rules under General Education, and the courses which cut departmental lines were conceived in General Education in a Free Society. Now any course in the catalogue is accepted for distribution, and the Committee feels that its courses must only fill some holes. Consequently one could scarcely find a comparably fine group of courses in any department's listings, for interest and good teaching are held more important than inclusiveness.

Quality of Upper Courses

The Quality of the courses indicates one of Gen Ed's greatest contributions to Harvard education. Unlike a department, the Committee has no use for the teaching services of the great scholar who bores students. It can altar or junk a course, and its repeated efforts to find or create an acceptable course in the biological sciences form one example. It would be hard to tell whether this influence has yet spread to other departments, but it certainly affects the many teaching fellows the Committee employs, the men who will climb the academic ladder to tenure in the departments eventually. This effect can certainly be expected to increase.

Writing clear English perplexes students everywhere, and learning how to do it is rarely interesting. Consequently, General Education Ahf, Harvard's freshman writing course, faces the same problems as similar courses at other institutions. One more it takes on itself--the risk of being disregarded by students--for as a full-year half-course it tends to be pushed aside by freshmen. A Gen Ed essay can be written in half an hour, and many of them are. Harold C. Martin, director of General Education Ahf, concedes, "Many students do not bring the same respect to this course as to others."

Aside from teaching exposition, Gen Ed Ahf provides two significant teaching methods as examples for the College. Fifteen to sixteen per cent of its students are enrolled in honors sections, which use only literary sources and requiremore work of the students. Freshmen in these sections usually emerge with a better impression of the course than others, and Martin believes this intellectual segregation works more effectively in a writing course than in others, for discussion in a Gen Ed Ahf section is not of great importance and therefore skimming the best students off does not hurt the others.

Gen Ed Ahf's other unique practice is a sort of general education for the faculty. The staff of this course is drawnfrom all fields of study, not exclusively drawn from graduate student ranks. Only a small minority of the teachers added to next year's staff are graduate students in English, and for the first time Martin is including some men from the law school.