Clarion Call

Although the original Committee on General Education pulled few punches in examining the role of secondary schools, little has occurred recently to dispel the widely-held impression that the Committee was beating invisible wings when it spoke out on the function of the high and prep school. Within the academic walls undergraduates have seen the visible fruits of "General Education in a Free Society," but little, unfortunately, seems to have drifted out into the public and private schools to ground the future college student with the kind of training which should lead up to the newly inaugurated program.

In the main the hypothetical nature of the College "experiment" has been outgrown, and General Education is now regarded with few exceptions as a good thing. Admittedly, details must be worked out, and it will be several years before an established curriculum will finally be adopted. However, the college has recognized the main educational problem of the times and has undertaken a solution which it is prepared to go along with as far as it can. An important point, which the Faculty Report recognized, lies in the simple fact that higher education alone cannot settle the present educational crisis, for General Education must be the goal of the secondary school as well as the university. What the Committee has failed to do is to take steps to publicize the University's position on secondary school curricula and to initiate specific readjustments of high and prep school programs to dovetail them with the college plan.

Objections are immediately raised at the thought of a university meddling in the affairs of secondary schools--and such objections are not ill-founded. Obviously the role of the Harvard Committee is not that of revamping faulty preparatory schools. Remoteness from the problems involved prevent any active correction on the secondary level by a University committee. Nonetheless, if the recommendations for high and prep schools are not to die aborning, the sincere proponents of General Education for the entire "free society" will have to saddle up their horses and get busy. A committee for open and active study in cooperation with the secondary schools might well be formed. A good deal more can certainly be said to the world outside the higher academic cloisters about the accomplishments of Harvard's General Education. Publicity-wary as the University may rightfully be, the new program must be given wider currency if the part of the faculty report on secondary education is to collect fingerprints instead of dust.

Although the original twelve-man committee saw the important interconnection between preparatory and college work, the new committee, which has done a satisfactory job thus far in carrying out the college side of the proposals, seems temporarily to have overlooked important measures which it could and should take to guarantee the other phase of this program. Naturally any efforts which are to be made will be of an advisory nature, but the ideas of the University on secondary education should not have to be sought. Committees for joint study coupled with a publicizing program, both under the direction of the present committee, are measures which can do much to extend the common principle of General Education to the entire Free Society.