Education: Balancing Act

When Winston Churchill accepted an invitation to speak at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949, a Harvardman asked John Ely Burchard, now M.I.T.'s dean of humanities and social studies: "How did you persuade Winston to speak to those steam fitters of yours?" As Burchard well knew, there was a mite of truth in the joke, in spite of mighty efforts already made to broaden the humanities curriculum. Was the nation's top technical school still giving its students too narrow an education? Last week the M.I.T. faculty formally approved a new experiment that may eventually answer the question.

Once in gear, the plan...

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