EDITORIAL

...In some places the new plans may look like the faculty-administration counter-reformation against the occasionally radical reforms in student life and teaching that swept the campuses in the 1960s--a chance for a oncebadgered, faculty to rebound against today's off-guard, docile, job-oriented and passive student generation and reestablish some authoritative requirements: a list of what one generation thinks the next generation ought to know to function as a liberally educated human being...

...But students and faculty of the '60s also knew a few things their successors are in danger of forgetting: tha~ students often learn best when the academic questions arise from questions they really ask about life, God, death, love, justice and trust--not from a course called Introduction to Eternal Questions I & II...

...36-page curriculum study in which it proposes to take away vi tually unchecked student discretion in course selectic n and impose ,coherence and a sense of educational ~r ~orities" in a core curriculum of seven to ten courses, ~'0 ~ut one quarter of the student's work, with requiren~ :nts in literature and the arts, history, social and philosophical analysis, science and mathematics, and foreign language and culture...

...1 March 1978:196...

...Harvard, while it describes what the graduate should be able to do and how he should critically appreciate the universe, prudently offers no prescription for what he should believe...

...it is strong on writing, the arts, interdisciplinary studies and courses dealing with moral issues...

...To design a course or assign a book implies some kind of value judgment...

...Some good points: it is flexible, respects the student's intelligence, and doesn't overload him with structure or cook up superficial in~ troductory courses everyone must take, rather it describes what kind of substantive knowledge and skills the requirement is mean.t to instill and calls into being new courses designed to meet these aims...

...nor does it deal with God or theology outside the context of history and philosophy...

...Much of this shift is good...

...that universities (like people) that want ,prestige" and wealth can get too eager, become slaves ,~f the state and compromise the prophetic role that b;longs to the university campus as much as it does to th: church...

...Since Catholic universities often define themselves by the degree to which they are or are not Harvard, they should study the Harvard proposal for ideas on what the "best" secular education offers and fails to provide...

...that universities as institutions function best as communities, where decision-making is shared, where students and teachers live and learn together because they have a romance with someone named Truth whom they have spotted from a distance but can't get close enough Commonweal: 195 to embcace...

...nor does it discuss how the very atmosphere of the university teaches, how students form their values on the basis of how they are treated and how .faculty and administrators deal with them and with one another...

...And the smorgasbord approach to education, accented by the anti-authority's '60s "I'm not 'into' reading and writing," and "No one should have to do anything he doesn't want to do" mentality, brought on more cultural illiteracy and moral aimlessness, "ya know," than a society can stand...

...THE NEW CURRICULUM In what may be a major turning point in the history of American higher education, a good number of universities---~Harvard among them--are making this the great year of curriculum revision...

...A required core curriculum establishes, however indirectly, a university's creed and character...

...Harvard has just published its four-year...

...that faculty and administrators (like students), when their power and performance go unchallenged, become lazy, irresponsible and corrupt...