Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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feeling current among us. Their essential thought was examined as the core of the Western tradition . . . through which we still comprehend man himself, as a social being, and as a partner in belief. In another course the epic and the novel were studied with such texts as the Iliad, the Otlyrrey, the Divine Comedy, Pumclife Loft, and a group of novels ranging from Don Quixote to M aby Dirk and War and Peace. Finally two half-courses dealt with Individual and Social Values in Literature,', first in history and drama and then in fiction and philosophy. The texts were chosen to reflect a variety of attitudes toward the continuing interplay between society and the individual and were studied with reference to the nature of the forms, and the logic and rhetoric underlying them, with the emphasis on concepts of personality, motiva- tion, and ethical responsibility, and the manner of their em- bodiment in literary forms. Success but No Panacea All these courses were repeated in 1947-48 and to them were added three other half-courses, one on Classics of the Christian Tradition an introduction to the Christian spirit as it has been expressed in some of its greatest expositors, one on Great Artists, designed to introduce students to the world of creative achievement in the visual arts by means Of a direct approach dispensing with theoretical systems and involving historical considerations only to help to pro- mote response and understanding, and a third on Types of The authors of the famed General Education Report. Clockwise: Dean Buck, Professors Ulich, Dunlop, Wright, jones, Demos, Hoadley, Gaus, Schlesinger, Wilson, and Finley. Members of KARL VIETOR , , l iimi-kv Prnfi-ssor nf Gi-rnmn Ili 'K .-Xrt, :mil Culture EDWARD ULLMAN Assirdlviilili l'rnfm-ssnr of lit-ginlull ANDREWS WANNING l'ri'L2iEliilif?l'hllii:iRmliy .min irii t 1-r.if.vSW .if i+:i.,aiaHi. Art: the Representation of Nature in European and Asiatic Art, a treatment of selected masterpieces with consideration in its broadest sense of the whole question of man's reaction to the world he lives in and the means by which . . . artists the Committee not shown in the picture include Byron S. Hollins- head, President Wilbur K. jordan of Radcliffe, I. A. Richards, Phillip J. Rulon, and George Wald. l47l v L unset

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Williztm Ernest Hocking, the Alford Professor of Natural Re- ligion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Emeritus, still delivers occasional lectures, was a member of the recent Commission on Freedom of the Press. mtirm in ll Free Soviely, the elaborate report of a special Uni- versity Committee appointed during the war, presented a pro- gram for general education at Harvard, which was approved in principle by the Faculty in October, 1945. The term, general education, said the report, does not mean some airy educa- L. F, SOLANO TAYLOR STARCK Asww. l'l'nf. uf lioln:tn1-i- i7H.llL'1ll1Il.ft'H l'l'Hf4'HSUl' of fil'l'HHlII WILLIAM THOMSON ROBERT ULICH .Iiewi-Ll, l'mfw':4oi' of .-Xrzthirr Prof:-sruir of l'i1lut::tl.iou Serge Elisseeff along with Edwin Reischauer and Historian john Fairbanks have made Harvard's Far Eastern department one of the nation's best. tion in knowledge in general Cif there be such knowledgejf' nor does it mean education for all in the sense of universal education. It is used to indicate that part of a student's whole education which looks first of all to life as a responsible human being and citizen. The committee in charge of the new program added: Among the elements which go to make up general education are the cultivation ofa sense of values, the development of clear thinking, and an understanding of the physical and social world in which we live. - The General Education Program In the fall of 1946 the program began with eight experimental courses, each limited in size and restricted to Freshmen and Sophomotes. The total enrollment was 479. In 1947-48 more courses were added, including some speci- fically designed for upper classmen. Limitations on enrollment were taken off and the number of students increased to 1720. The courses were given in three fields: Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and the Humanities. In each the emphasis was on the subject not as a field for specialization but as a kind of knowledge with a way of thinking that must be understood for successful living in the modern world. The Student Council issued a report based on the opinions of the students who took part in the first year's program. This showed an impressively favorable response, especially to the courses in the humanities. In one of these Homer, the Old Testament, Plato, Dante, Montaigne, and Shakespeare were read and discussed as sources of out common ideas and as great examples of ways of thinking and 1461

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of various periods in East and West have expressed this re- action. Courses in General Education are not panaceas for every educational ill, but those offered in the last two years at Harvard represent an approach to the study of the humanities which, to judge from the results, has already proved fruitful. Like all courses they depend for success less on their method than on the men who give them and their ability to arouse sympathetic and intelligent response in students. Much of the material has already been taught in other courses and will continue to beg the hope of the experiment in General Educa- tion is that its new emphasis may give to both instructors and pupils fresh interest and insight. Should General Education be Compulsory? The report which proposed the General Education program and was approved in principle by the Faculty, sug- gested that after an experimental period three of the elementary courses should be required of every undergraduate together with three others chosen either from the General Education list or from a group of other courses in various departments and approved as suitable by the General Education Com- mittee. On this the Student Council's report on student opinion dissented. A majority of the undergraduates who were polled opposed making General Education courses a compulsory part of the Harvard program. There is good reason for the opposition. Compulsory courses at Harvard have almost always been handicapped. Students have tended to resent any course which they have been forced to take or to elect from a very limited group of possibilities, and their re- sentment, as many English A instructors know, has too often shown itself in apathy or worse, so that the task of effective teaching and the conduct of vigorous discussion has been made hard or even impossible. Resentment or apathy on the part of undergraduates would surely block the ends for which the General Education courses have been planned. It may be Bartlett Whiting gives courses on Chaucer and on Old and Middle English. Dean of the Graduate School of Design, joseph Hudnut heads a distinguished group of modern architects including Walter Gropius of Bauhaus fame. that their obvious value will overcome the traditional dislike for compulsory or quasi-compulsory programs, but it is to be hoped that the initial student reaction will be carefully pon- dered and that the Faculty will not impose any requirement until it is certain that it will accomplish more good by doing so than by letting General Education stay on a take-it-or- leave-it basis. If it has the merit it should, it will prove itself and will reach all those capable of profiting by it, if it is even in part forced on the undergraduate, there is at least a chance that the taint of compulsion may jeopardize its success. Tutorial is Weakened Unfortunately the same half-decade which saw the beginnings of General Education as a promising step forward in educational method and a new way of arriving at an under- standing of the full value of the humanities for modern life, saw also the weakening of another educational system which had abundantly demonstrated its ability to serve the same ends for students specializing in humane studies. For years the tutorial plan was a feature of Harvard education, and dubious as its utility may have been in some fields, there is no doubt that it worked admirably in the humanities. The student who read and discussed his reading with a tutor, who found in tutorial a chance to follow lines of inquiry independently of courses, and who learned to understand and think better by testing his ideas against those of an instructor working individually with him, often got immensely more out of his 'l48l