etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

i read an interesting word for the first time a week ago. i didn’t notice it until i read it again tonight.

desiderata is the plural form of the word desideratum, something considered necessary or highly desirable. the root is in the word sidus, meaning constellation or heavenly body.

with its latest draft, a task force on general education outlined a new battery of course work, desiderata, that it feels one ought not leave harvard without. the report is remarkable in its insight and the sensitivity of its authors to the changing world is certainly exciting.

in some ways the newest installment of curricular review drama has brought us to a more exciting place. the boldness of the philosophy, seemingly more coherent and more value driven than the box of chocolates style of previous drafts, is quite uplifting. more exciting to me personally (if you remember my utter dismay at the failure to include moral reasoning in the spring version) is the inclusion of areas like “reason and faith” and “the ethical life.” also, the recognition of our place as an american university at the center of growingly global society is invigorating. it seemed earlier that harvard was losing the recognition of and obligation to america and the historical tradition that has very much shaped this university (and allowed it to thrive), while simultaneously treating “societies of the world” as alien and foreign cultures (vastly different and terribly distant). the new curriculum seems to better locate its focus on “cultural traditions and cultural change” and our place as members of “the united states” as global citizens, united in a citizenship informed by reason and faith.

but the report is hardly as bold and brilliant as its language and the steps forward are at least matched by the steps backward (steps backward from the boldness of an admittedly failed and frail core).

while the proposed system advocates for a broader and more salient distribution of general education requirements, it abandons any attempt at introducing a core to the harvard undergraduate experience and fails to draw out what is unique to life within the yard.

“a harvard education has many dimensions: student organizations, athletics, the arts, and the life of the residential houses all contribute to the intellectual, ethical, and personal growth of undergraduates. the academic experience, though, is the centerpiece. it has three components: the concentration, electives, and general education.”

what lies at the center of the academic experience? of the harvard experience as a whole? what ties it together and makes it one undergraduate experience, a narrative and not just a series of events?

where the core sought to tie together “harvard” the experience and failed, the new proposal abandons all attempt. the dimensions of a harvard education, it seems, have ceased to require a core, a central thesis. a silent resignation to that idea, of a united experience, of a classroom curriculum that would initiate community, that would convene and catalyze conversation, not on a specific subject but with a common spirit, upon a common lexicon, a common foundation, a silent resignation underlies the report.

the framework is mostly a success (with the notable exception of the “activity-based learning initiative” which is the biggest piece of meaningless goop in the report), but it is a successful framework only for distribution, not something we shouldn’t have, but not the only thing that should be replacing our current core. the distribution is phenomenally adaptive to our current needs, but it leaves wanting in the curriculum something that universally defines the university experience of the undergraduate. we still need one class (just one) that asks us the important questions and teaches us the important language to begin finding our answers, together.

i thought that harvard would, after this long a process, articulate a desiderata that reached higher, but instead i see a clever report that shrinks from real greatness. we have in our hands a thesis-less proposal that fails on its own objectives to define mandatory analytical reasoning requirement (that’s anything different than just having everyone take statistics 101), increase college-wide dialogue (between students and students and students and faculty), engage harvard’s professional schools in the workings of the college, and put “all the learning” we “are doing at harvard” in “context.”

it was a cool word. but the draft needs some revision.