To the editors:

There is nothing new about your editorial criticizing the Core (Sep. 20), recent reform notwithstanding. Harvard's 20-year-old Core Curriculum is still embarrassingly inadequate to prepare students to join 'the company of educated men and women' once they graduate.

Although I was dissatisfied with the Core throughout my time at Harvard because of its sporadic approach to a well-rounded education (much like throwing darts in the dark), I have never been so unhappy with it as now. As I prepared this summer to teach seventh grade, I sadly remembered that the only world history I learned at Harvard was the century or so around the time of Augustus. A critical period, certainly; an interesting class, yes; but not enough to give me perspective on even the emperors who followed, let alone the far-reaching effects of the entire Roman Empire.

As I keep one step ahead of the students and teach myself about African empires and the Justinian Code, I think back to all the failed Faculty debates on including History 10a and 10b in the Core, all the swirling chatter about "methods and approaches to knowledge," and I wonder: To what end the self-righteous administrators' smugness at keeping the Core untainted by survey courses, if I hold a degree from Harvard and cannot call myself liberally educated?

Harvard must require its students to take a history survey class on world civilizations; if not, it risks defaming its reputation as a liberal arts institution even more than it already has.

SARAH J. SCHAFFER '97

Los Angeles, Calif. Sep. 21, 1998

The writer was editorial chair of The Crimson in 1996.