"Rocking the Boat"
Few if any Faculty members will oppose this broad conception, will maintain that departmental education is solely adequate for a liberal education. A more substantial number may insist on "not rocking the boat" and suggest that the present program adequately attains these goals, and argue that a further expenditure of time on Gen Ed isn't worth the trouble. Still others may want to harken back to the Redbook and reaffirm even more strongly a faith in the need for training students in the philosophy and history of Western Civilization.
But it is not in the nature of the report, nor is the mood of the Faculty expansive enough, to spend much time on generalities.
THE REFORMULATION OF GENERAL EDUCATION--Instead debate will center here and over Administrative problems since the Doty report is not so much a philosphical document as a pragmatic one, asks not whether General Education is a good think for democratic society, but whether it can be made better at Harvard.
To make Gen. Ed. better at Harvard, the Doty Committee proposed three "organizing ideas of reformulation." All three will likely be contested to some degree.
1. According to the report, the new program "should include important areas of knowledge not adequately presented in the present program." This means replacing the tripartite division with two areas, Sciences and Humanities, including the "systematic" social sciences under Science, and increasing the science load of undergraduates from 1/16 to 1/8 of their course work in college.
Snow Right?
Some faculty members may oppose the new division on the grounds that it "proves C.P. Snow right." Although the division of the two cultures is only administrative, they fear that it will create an "epistemological gap" with the resulting failure of communication.
Somewhat in the same vein, certain members of the "behaviorial sciences" may balk at being placed in the Science category since they emphasize humanistic or historical threads of their disciplines.
2. A second "organizing idea" is "to introduce a greater variety of course offerings accommodating various levels of preparation." Although many other colleges believe in the homogeneity of an entering class, the Harvard experience has proved otherwise. Few will object to a recognition that the first course at college need not be uniform. But some will say that if certain freshmen are coming so well-prepared why bother to create special General Education courses for them.
Depth Education
3. The third task of reformulation is to "provide course sequences so that the option to pursue certain interests in greater depth could be available." This suggestion will bring the charge, one of the most serious facing the report, that it is not the role of General Education to provide such education in depth. That role is for the departments.
Moreover, the proliferation of Gen Ed courses provides ammunition for those who contend that General Education has become an elaborate system of distribution requirements, that requiring students to take a certain number of departmental courses outside their own field would fulfill the ideals of General Education as formulated now.
ADMINISTRATIVE REARMAMENT--Whereas opposition to other sections of the Doty Report appears, as of now, to be fragmented and amorphous, over this section the lines of battle are more clearly drawn. The departments are challenged more directly, and it seems quite possible that all three proposals of the report in this area may be modified.
First, the Doty Report asks that a committee on General Education, composed of permanent faculty members and chaired by the Dean of the Faculty, be charged with operating responsibility for the program and all other elements of non-departmental education.
