"Grades are not only inconsistent with the aims of education, but are actually harmful to the individual." Magaziner wrote last spring. "They encourage a mechanical kind of learning . . . act as artificial goals and become ends in themselves, discouraging student's from developing their own values." Furthermore, he found, "they are not even accurate, except in predicting grade-getting ability." He concluded that grades served only to sort students for future careers as professional or graduate students.

To end the aimlessness and alienation of the freshman year, the Report recommended the creation of numerous new "Modes of Thought" (MOT) courses. Like many general education offerings at Harvard, these courses would attempt to help students understand a particular field. Unlike many general education courses, they would not attempt to survey much factual material. but would be problem oriented.

Like freshman seminars at Harvard, MOT courses would be conducted in small groups only, and encourage the close collaboration of students and faculty members. Unlike freshman seminars, they would de-emphasize specialized content and encourage students to explore the concepts that relate one field of study to another.

Finally, the Report urged more interdisciplinary courses in general, more leeway in concentration requirements, the end of distribution requirements (except for MOT courses), and a greater opportunity for students to work out their own academic program through individual independent study. G.I.S.P. s. and participation as teaching assistants in MOT courses in their field.

Magaziner's group released the 450 page manuscript of its final report in February, 1968. David Riesman, Harvard's Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences, would later call it "a Herculean effort, an impressive document." But few members of the faculty took notice. The special faculty sub-committee appointed by President Heffner met twice a week during much of the spring, but made no recommendations. In April, the Brown Daily Herald reported that the "vast majority of the faculty was unaware" of the report.

( In Friday's CRIMSON: how undergraduate education at Brown was eventually reformed, and what Brown's experience suggests about curriculum changes at Harvard. )