Now, I have never studied at Harvard, and all universities are somewhat silly in their planning, but the release reproduced below the fold strikes me as one of the better proposals for undergraduate level tertiary education. It suggests that even science students might need to understand their world, and humanities students need to understand basic science, and so on. Kudos.
Harvard Faculty Approve New General Education Curriculum For Undergraduate StudentsCambridge, Mass. - May 15, 2007 - The Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved a motion that sets the stage for the implementation of the first complete overhaul of general education for undergraduates in nearly 30 years. By voting to put in place a new program in General Education, the FAS is replacing the Core Program established in the late 1970s.
The goals of the new General Education curriculum are to prepare students for civic engagement; teach students to understand themselves as products of -- and participants in -- traditions of art, ideas, and values; prepare students to respond critically and constructively to change; and to develop students' understanding of the ethical dimensions of what they say and do.
The new program requires students to take a semester-long course in each of the following areas:
Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding to help students develop skills in criticism, that is, aesthetic responsiveness and interpretive ability.
Culture and Belief to develop an understanding of and appreciation for traditions of culture and belief in human societies.
Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning to teach the conceptual and theoretical tools used in reasoning and problem solving, such as statistics, probability theory, mathematics, logic, and decision theory.
Ethical Reasoning to teach how to reason about moral and political beliefs and practices, and how to deliberate and assess claims about ethical issues.
Science of Living Systems to introduce concepts, facts, and theories relevant to living systems.
Science of the Physical Universe to introduce key concepts, facts, and theories about the physical universe that equip students to understand better our world and the universe.
Societies of the World to examine one or more societies outside the United States.
The United States in the World to examine American social, political, legal, cultural, and/or economic institutions, practices, and behavior, from contemporary, historical, and/or analytical perspectives.
The program is consistent with past general education programs at Harvard that prescribe a set of requirements and call for a set of extra-departmental course options, rather than advocate that students have free range across existing departmental offerings in the form of an open distribution system. It emphasizes subjects, rather than academic disciplines, and seeks to inspire lifelong interest in those subjects with a pedagogy that relates material studied in the classroom to issues and problems of wide concern.
"This new program is the result of hundreds of hours of lively engagement by the Faculty," said David Pilbeam, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "As a result, I am hopeful that we have fashioned something that is both challenging to the life of our students' minds and responsive to their interests and needs."
Harvard University President Derek Bok said, "I am very pleased that the Faculty has approved a new curriculum. With clear and compelling goals coupled with carefully crafted criteria defining the courses to achieve them, the new general education program offers an impressive framework for acquiring the breadth essential to a strong liberal arts education. I am grateful to all those who worked so hard to make this possible."
The legislation calls for the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to appoint a standing committee that will foster the development of new general education courses. The committee will also be responsible for planning all aspects of the transition from the Core Program to the Program in General Education, and will report back to the faculty on these plans next year.
The legislation passed by the Faculty today was derived from the final Report of the Task Force on General Education issued in February 2007.
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But this program doesn't include "The Secret"!!
I've been thinking about this, and isn't this programme the sort of thing the schools should be doing? I'm for all for encouraging students to diversify the range of subjects they learn, but I wonder how well this will be received by the students, forcing them to take courses in areas they aren't interested in, whilst reducing what they learn about their main interests.
This looks too much like a platypus curriculum.
Bob
I wouldn't consider this a "platypus curriculum." It looks like a well-rounded overview of this increasingly complex, and increasingly interconnected world.
Too much university education has become only job training -- the sort of thing that trade schools teach. I can recall fellow students in my university classes who were interested only in getting the diploma in order to land a better job -- and to hell with "education." This was 17 years ago, and it's not gotten any better. In the United States (which thankfully, is not my home) it has gotten much worse, with colleges turning out graduates who excel only in magical thinking.
University should be as much about creating thinking self-aware citizens as it is about education and skills.
This is a step in the right direction.
The problem for me is not with the principle (-al?) of this, but with the practice. Some quick calculations, based on my undergrad days in Leeds: there were 2 semesters of 12 weeks. In each week we would have about 20 hours of contact time (lectures, practicals etc.). If we take this as a basis, then in any semester a student must take 4 courses from the 8 outlined above, plus their "normal" courses. Let's assume (for the sake of argument) that they are expected to spend half their time on these courses, then that amounts to 120 hours over the semester, or 30 hours of lectures etc. per course. I'm sceptical that you can get very far in teaching much about any one of these areas, especially to a bunch of un-interested students who are only there because they're told they have to be.
The curriculum looks like a wish-list thought up by a committee: "We want to teach the students the whole of Western thought!". It looks like they wrote down what they thought a well-rounded student should know, but with no regard to how this would be taught. If in doubt, they voted to include something (was there a theoretical statistician on the committee. How else would logic and decision theory get equal weight?).
This curriculum looks like it would be a good school curriculum, where all students should get a rounded education anyway, and there it is easier to argue for compunction to take courses. But university students are (almost) adults, so they should be treated as such, and given more opportunity to choose what they want to learn.
I would favour a curriculum which stated that a certain proportion of their courses should be taken from other faculties, but which let the students choose which courses to take. I would guess that some faculties will respond by setting up "Introduction to..." courses, so much of this curriculum would become available anyway. But it would mean that, for example, students could chose to study English Literature, rather than having to go through a course on Art History.
But they should be forced to go to courses on economics, so that they can learn why a free-market system like this is the best. :-)
Bob