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Roaming far beyond the banks of the tranquil Charles, Harvard's investigators have examined the whole educational system, and have ended by pointing the finger squarely at the nation's secondary schools.
Three-quarters of America's 7,000,000 high-school students do not go on to college. Therefore, says the committee, it is the high schools' prime job to equip them for citizenship in a free society. At present, most of this Jacksonian three-quarters learn critically little of democracy's common roots, hence are condemned to flounder in a maze of "practical" Jeffersonian specialization.
Recommended Requirements. The Harvard survey makes specific recommendations. Of the 16 year-courses regularly required for a high-school diploma, it urges that at least eight be in the general (core) subjects: three in English, three in science and mathematics, two in history, government and related social studies. That would leave no student more than half his school time for learning a skill or trade. But for the three-quarters who are not going to college, the committee recommends further core concentration: an additional three courses.
One surprise package in the report is culture-conscious Harvard's casual shoulder shrug to foreign languages. The committee seems to say, in the course of much backing & filling, that the majority of high-school students could more profitably spend their time on English, art or history than on French, Spanish, German (let alone Latin and Greek).
For Harvard College itself, the report prescribes the same medicine. Of the 16 courses requisite for a B.A., six should be compulsory in the humanities, sciences and social sciences. And to implement this core requirement, the committee calls for a number of brand-new survey courses.* Only after satisfying these requirements in general education, could the Harvard student of the future go in for specialization.
The Basic Concern. The Harvard report is no lightning shaft from Olympus. Its arguments, though sound, suffer by restatement; the document as a whole loses point by diffuse organization. But most educators will find merit in its eclectic conservatism. No other survey has scrutinized the educational field more comprehensively or related it so closely to the nation's welfare.
For those who would dismiss Harvard's cultural prescription as effete and impractical, the committee underlines its basic concern: "The question has become more & more insistent: what is the right relationship between specialistic training on the one hand, aiming at any one of a thousand different destinies, and education in a common heritage and toward a common citizenship on the other? It is not too much to say that the very character of our society will be affected by the answer to that question."
* One of these, titled "Great Texts of Literature," is sure to bring satisfied smiles to Hutchins and St. John's fans.