Harvard's General Education program (Gen. Ed.), charged with turning concentrators into liberally-educated men and women since 1946, went the way of segregated classes and ties in the Union in 1974.

Gen. Ed. was replaced in that year by the Core curriculum, whose eight course requirements undergraduates still face, and whose future spent most of last semester in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' (FAS) intellectual spotlight.

By the end of the examination of the Core, the Faculty unanimously endorsed the original philosophy, adding only a Quantitative Reasoning course requirement and mandating an increase in course offerings.

Hence, the "approaches to knowledge" that became the Gen. Ed.'s heir as the lynchpin of a Harvard education in a post-vocational age continues. The aim remains teaching students not a skill so much as ways of "civilized" living and thinking.

While any system of general requirements has its critics, many in the Faculty, the undergraduate body and the network of alumni say the Core comes much closer to the goal of producing a company of educated men and women than any of its predecessors.

Core History 101

Replacing a system of distribution requirements, the General Education program was approved by the Faculty in late October, 1945, just three months after the Japanese surrender and the victory of the Western powers in World War II. Victory in the war was widely credited not to a surplus of men, machinery or economic muscle, but rather to the superiority of Western culture.

"There was a view that the values that had prevailed in World War II were the values of the West, and there was an obligation to makes sure all undergraduates were informed about these values," says Secretary of FAS John B. Fox '59, an undergraduate in Gen. Ed.'s early years.

The lower-level requirements mapped out for first-years and sophomores in Gen. Ed.'s first year to offer courses, '46-'47, reflect Fox's impression. These include Humanities 1a: "Homer, The Old Testament, Plato," and Social Sciences 1a and 1b: "Introduction to the Social Inheritance of Western Civilization."

Upper-level Gen Ed courses could be more specific within the three areas of Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences--in some ways mirroring current, more specific Core courses. However, by the early '70s, Faculty felt the quality of courses offered in the program was in decline.

"The courses weren't general enough. They confused 'general' with 'odd.' It looked as if they were things that the professor would be ashamed to give in his own department," says Harvey C. Mansfield '53, Kenan professor of government.

Gen Ed was faltering, both in the classroom and on the ideological battlefield, as the Western capitalism and civilizations which seemed invincible in 1945 were exposed as vulnerable in the jungles of Vietnam.

"Vietnam was largely conducted on the same precepts that informed Gen Ed, that West is best," Fox says. "In the wake of that period, people weren't so sure that Western culture, WASP culture was particularly useful, valid or respectable."

The newly-introduced Core divided a liberal education into ten areas, with a strong tinge of cultural relativism. Areas like Social Analysis, Literature and Arts, Moral Reasoning, Historical Studies and Foreign Cultures grounded a liberal education in a global culture.

"The Core identified a broad range of slices of the fundamental areas a liberal education ought to include," says Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the history of science. "It was not a broad cluster of subjects, but dealt with knowledge within well-defined and interesting areas."

New Ideas: Great Books and QRR