Deconstructing General Education

By Patrick T. Brennan

In a January 27 piece, New York Times columnist David Brooks took up the less-than-Herculean task of criticizing Harvard’s General Education curriculum. Citing the professed purpose of general education “to disorient young people,” he pointed out one of the real deficiencies, not just of the “elite education”—as Alan Dershowitz calls it—but of the modern, self-absorbed mindset.

Harvard’s General Education philosophy advocates an avocational way of living: a purely individual and self-consumed approach. By “defamiliarizing the familiar” and “unsettling…presumptions,” Gen Ed rejects an idea that has governed society for centuries: what came before us actually worked. Mr. Brooks astutely points out that, while skepticism is certainly an important priority of academia, Gen Ed’s mission statement represents a troubling trend in society at large.

If the primary purpose of education at the world’s greatest university is deconstruction of the establishment, what does this say about the modern world? Mr. Brooks fears the implications of a worldview that places such a high value on skepticism. To paraphrase him, the modern ideal holds that we are no longer defined by what life asks of us, but by what we ask of life. This rejection of any and all institutions merely because they are institutions poses great dangers for society.

Such a mindset has taken root at Harvard and attacked the foundations of our institution. Unsurprisingly for a left-leaning institution, the modern ideal of personal inquiry, self-determination, and skepticism has rapidly become dominant. One only needs to read some of Drew Faust’s words to realize that she, as the University’s steward, is all too happy to steer young people away from loyalty and towards egotism. There have been corollary effects not just in Harvard’s academic quarters, but in every aspect of the University’s culture. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Bill Fitzsimmons is famous for pointing out that for every student Harvard admits, it creates one ingrate and ten enemies.

The modern obsession with self-discovery has infected Harvard in a variety of ways. Dean Fitzsimmons’s characterization of Harvard students as “ingrates” is hardly difficult to prove. From Crimson editorials decrying the user interface of the CUE Guide—especially the appalling fact that classes can only be rated from 1-5, rather than 1-10—to the movement regarding the “right” to skip one’s scheduled exam in order to attend President Obama’s inauguration, examples abound. To take the latter example, there is nothing inherently wrong with wishing to see a historic event take place, but there is something sickeningly self-congratulatory about suggesting that Harvard students deserve to be at a presidential inauguration, instead of fulfilling their academic obligations. 

In his Apology, Socrates argues that it is right to stay in whatever post a just authority, be it a god or a military commander, has placed one. Harvard has long abandoned requiring the study of the Classics, and it certainly shows when Harvard students en masse choose to reject the arguments of the world’s first great skeptic. Harvard students would be well-served to heed his admonition. Socrates challenged the laws and leaders of Athens in shocking ways, but he still consented to the idea that it was just for society to be governed by certain mores, and that they ask more of us than they offer to us. Harvard students, of all people, should be the first to recognize that.

Even the lack of so-called “school spirit” at Harvard, I believe, can be traced to the rejection of the institutional mindset. At the Harvard-Yale game freshman year, after I had let loose a string of choice insults directed at Yale students in general, a Harvard student next to me commented that it was ridiculous for me to accuse the entire Yale student body of not knowing how to read. In reply, his friend in fact questioned the very idea of hating Yale in the first place: After all, we’re all pretty similar. What’s the point?

The point is that loyalty matters. Harvard has created an environment in which it is considered base, immature, or ignorant to care about something merely because of one’s attachment to it. Though my anecdote above certainly does not prove my point, it is hard to go a day at Harvard without hearing caviling complaints about the university, its faculty, its employees, or nearly anything else.

Students of course have a right to criticize their own university, and indeed, institutions that matter to us can always benefit from criticism. But an intellectual culture in which rejection of preexisting institutions is a sine qua non fosters an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Ironically, the Harvard of say, the 1930s, contained far more students who had in fact been entitled all their lives, but this entitlement carried a sense of duty. Now that most Harvard students can assure themselves that they have been accepted to the world’s greatest university on their own merit, they seem to think they deserve the ability to rate their professor a 3 out of 10, rather than a 2 out of 5. The problem is not that all Harvard students are self-centered, because they are not. The problem is that Harvard—regardless of all the platitudes disbursed about the importance of serving the public interest—implicitly rejects the idea of self-sacrifice.

Recent Harvard alumni give in far fewer numbers than their forebears did, indicating a more substantive lack of loyalty to their alma mater, and this is not because the quality of their experience was worse. It is rather because this puerile modern sense of entitlement has given them the idea that they owe Harvard nothing, and Harvard owes them all-you-can-eat organic fennel in the dining hall. This is despite the fact that even students paying full tuition at Harvard (who comprise less than a quarter of the student body), pay less than half the cost of their education, thanks to the generosity of generations who believed in the importance of institutions.

Harvard will not drive itself out of business merely because its new curriculum teaches students that they should never have to donate. That’s not the point. The worrisome reality, however, is that growing scorn for institutional thinking—as social scientist Hugh Heclo terms it—could drastically alter American society. Allegiance to a higher calling has ordered society for ages, and the death of this sense of obligation will have deleterious consequences for charities, schools, churches, and nearly every other facet of civil society. John F. Kennedy’s admonition to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is perilously irrelevant for our generation.