Word: subject
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Student Backgrounds Present Dilemma Faced with a huge stack of applications, and subject to intense pressures from within the College, the Dean of Admissions must maintain a host of balances. Perhaps the most controversial balance is that between students with superior academic preparation, and the less prepared, but no less brilliant "diamonds-in-the-rough" students whose pre-college background has failed to provide an atmosphere of learning...
...religion is formally removed from the College sphere, a crucial problem arises: namely, the moral education of the student. Among those most actively concerned with the implications of secularism at Harvard is President Pusey, who last June devoted his Baccalaureate address to the subject of moral philosophy at Harvard. Describing the history of this subject in American colleges and particularly at Harvard, he went on to discuss the position of moral concerns in the contemporary college...
Moral philosophy is not widely discussed at Harvard, either in classes or out. But unfamiliar as President Pusey's subject was, the answer he supplied to his own question was even more surprising. Speaking of who it is that teaches the course in moral philosophy today, he said "Together perhaps--you, your teachers, all of us, with those who have been here before us--together perhaps we do. From the beginning this course set for itself aims which cannot be taught. But they can be learned, and it is my belief that as in an earlier day, so they continued...
Reinstituting the formal course at Harvard today is almost unthinkable, not because the subject matter has become obsolete, but because the didactic nature and ultimate aims of the course would seem to conflict with other values now implicitly considered more important to the College. One of these values, that of independence, is not strictly speaking a part of the curriculum, but it is talked about often, and its significance is felt in many aspects of Harvard life. Another value, that of critical scholarship, is taught in nearly every course in the University...
...independence and scholarship merely prevented the teaching of moral philosophy, but did not interfere with the learning of its aims, and if Harvard students did show a marked concern for ethical conduct, character, and duty, there would be no reason to discuss this subject. But these concerns do not in fact manifest themselves consistently either abstractly or in practice; and while they are often excluded because of a real conflict of desired values, their absence can also be ascribed to indolence and to a communal atmosphere which agrees to ignore them...