The entire text of the report on the Medical School's curriculum is printed below. Several sentences referring to a schematic diagram (not reproduced here) have been deleted. Also, an appendix to the report has not been reprinted.--Ed.

In a time of great social upheaval and rapid developments in science no profession with its roots in science and its goal to serve society can remain unaffected by the changes taking place about it. Medicine today is such a profession. There has perhaps been no period in its long history when the demands and expectations on Medicine have been so great. The demands arise from the rapid increase in the world's population, the increasing affluence of modern industrialized society with its ability to pay for better than minimal health standards and the expectation that Medicine can reduce suffering, conquer disease and assure to all a better life free of physical and mental illness.

These demands and expectations have created new and diverse roles for the Doctor of Medicine. Proficiency in entirely new areas of health protection, e.g., rediation safety, environmental pollution prevention, population control, etc., is expected while traditional patterns of medical care are severely challenged. To survive, Medicine must evolve new patterns to deepen its roots in science and broaden its scope of service to society. Natural selection is too slow a process to insure survival; careful planning must proceed on several fronts. A clear view of the many new roles expected of the physician should lead to an education which will prepare him for the diversity of services expected of him. This view must lead to a reconsideration of the curriculum in medical school and proceed with bold innovations in both premedical and postgraduate education.

The aims of a new curriculum should be:

1. To allow more flexibility to meet the various needs of individual students that arise from differences in background, interests and choice of future careers in medicine.

2. To cultivate habits of independent thinking and scholarship which will insure continuing assimilation of new knowledge after graduation.

To accomplish these aims it seems necessary to:

1. Reduce the amount of factual information and memorizing pressed upon the students, and to allow more time for students to read, discuss and think in the atmosphere of a graduate school, rather than of a trade school.

2. Teach a "core curriculum" In a limited time by a coordinated interdepartmental activity.

3. Increase time in all years for elective courses designed to explore subjects in depth and taught primarily on a departmental basis.

4. Intermingle biological, behavioral and clinical sciences throughout the curriculum so that the student acquires a real sense of how the third draws its strength from the first two.

5. Maintain the motivation of most beginning students to help suffering humanity by introducing them early in their training to patients. This should be done in exercises designed to increase students' awareness of the emotional and socio-economic aspects of the preclinical sciences to pathophysiology of disease. An increasing responsibility for the care of patients, as rapidly as background and clinical skills permit, should also be provided.

The Core Curriculum

It is recognized that some core curriculum should provide the common information in the biological, behavioral and clinical sciences expected of all Doctors of Medicine. Because of differences in aptitudes and in training prior to medical school, parallel pathways may be required through part of this core curriculum. It is thought that this core could be taught by coordinated inter-departmental teaching which would serve to arouse the students' interest and excitement in the many fascinating areas of Medicine. It would not be aimed at didactic coverage of everything. Topics of great interest and pertinence may rather be emphasized with the thinking made clear, but with enough of the unsettled issues and unresolved problems introduced to stimulate the students to read, discuss, seek answers, design and perform experiments--in other words, to promote those highly individualistic exercises--usually away from the classroom--which for each student constitute the real educational experience. The core curriculum would also stimulate students to seek elective courses which would complement in depth the topics emphasized in the core curriculum.

Only by making the core curriculum a coordinated teaching exercise under continuous surveillance and revision by an appropriate body of the faculty do we think that the focus of the teaching can be kept on topics pertinent to the training of physicians. Only in this way, in turn, do we think that we can avoid undue cluttering of the curriculum with factual details. It is not our intent to belittle facts; the biological sciences unfortunately have not yet achieved broad generalizing concepts which reduce have not yet achieved broad generalizing concepts which reduce the need to know facts. We make this statement, however, in full awareness that it is not possible for every medical student to take from each course the detailed information expected of a Ph.D. candidate in that subject. However, he must acquire sufficient background and familiarity with each field to know when and how to return for further details when these may be helpful to him in his future work. To teach the details before the motivation to lean them exists, is pedagogy doomed to failure. We do not intend our remarks to lead to less rigorous teaching in the core curriculum but we do mean to say that major topics should be stressed and, to avoid undue repetition, considered from the vantage point of several departments so that the student feels the impact of this knowledge on Medicine in its broadest sense.