Word: core
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...University President James B. Conant ’14 essentially invented the idea of general education; its report, the “Redbook,” sold 40,000 copies in a few years. Former Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky’s 1979 review invented the Core and a system of “approaches to knowledge” that became popular nationwide...
Feldman says he worries the review may even look backwards rather than forwards, arguing it has an “alarming resemblance to the general education requirements” of two generations ago, with its proposal to replace the Core with a combination of departmental distribution requirements and the so-called Harvard College Courses, a set of as-yet-undefined broad interdisciplinary survey courses. This proposal somewhat resembles the distributional requirement system established in the 1940s, which faced widespread faculty and student dissatisfaction by the time of Rosovsky’s 1970s review that created the Core as a replacement...
...past two years, Harvard’s once-in-a-generation curricular review held the promise of a complete and visionary overhaul of undergraduate education at the University. 59 years ago, the same process introduced the very notion of a core curriculum to American academia. And the last time University dons gathered to rethink Harvard’s pedagogical orientation—in the 1970s—the College adopted its commitment to teaching “approaches to knowledge” in the Core and beyond. But the recently released Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR) report, which contains initial...
...most important change recommended in the HCCR report was also the most obvious—eliminating the tiresome Core Curriculum. Instead of the current “approaches to knowledge” plan—which has acquainted undergraduates more with rote memorization than critical thinking—the report recommends moving to less restrictive distribution requirements, allowing more departmental courses to count for general education credit. New classes known as Harvard College Courses would also “expand the horizons of both faculty and students” and “introduce bodies of knowledge, concepts and major...
Though we are particularly happy that the proposed Core reform enhances student choice, we are skeptical about some of the other recommendations in the HCCR report that claim to do the same thing. The drastic reform of the concentration system that the report suggests, for example, would undermine the quality of a Harvard degree. The possible cap of 12 required courses per concentration—something that would affect all but 18 of the 40 concentrations—would limit the depth of instruction at the College. Also, in all but 11 of the concentrations, Honors and Basic requirements would...