Word: chrisman
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...senior who has not only enjoyed all of my core curriculum courses, but also believed them integral to my education. I felt compelled to write in response to William H. Chrisman's guest commentary. "A Problem at Harvard's Core" (Sep. 27, 1994). I admire Mr. Chrisman's Continuing interest in Harvard and his desire to assist in resolving what he views as a threat to the University's prominence. Yet I believe there are a few points he has failed to consider...
...article, Mr. Chrisman attempts to demonstrate the flaws in the current core curriculum. Perhaps I should consider myself fortunate, for virtually every teaching fellow and professor I have encountered in the core has been excellent, neither "undertrained, undermotivated" or "confused." I have found that the "chronology, content, proportion and priority" which Mr. Chrisman obtained from his General Education requirements are still present in today's core, albeit in a different form...
...Chrisman cites the "firm grounding" in Western Civilization which his General Education courses gave him and states that this in lacking at Harvard today. Yet as an American high school student at a large public high school. I believe that my required American history, European history and world history courses gave me this grounding. I would venture to claim that other American students at public or private high schools received the same. Harvard's population of foreign students more unfamiliar than they would like with Western Civilization have ample survey courses within the History Department to select from, as does...
From everything I have heard about the past composition of Harvard classes, Mr. Chrisman's Class of 1955 would have been (almost without exception) white. Protestant or Catholic, and fairly well-off. Forty years later, my Class of 1995 is vastly more diverse, with people of countless racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds, a good proportion of them from non-Western countries. I therefore must confess that I do not understand the usefulness of requiring all students to have a thorough grounding in Western Civilization. Although a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (a definition which I see the need for only...
...respect Mr. Chrisman and his willingness to address what he views as a serious flew at Harvard, but I simply cannot agree that the core is truly as he describes it. Lesh Sparks...