Perspective Sidebar: At Harvard, a push toward 'activity-based learning'

For the first time in over 30 years, Harvard University has proposed major changes to its Core Curriculum.

Eight new subject areas would replace the curriculum's current 11, for which new classes will be created. In addition, a program of "activity-based learning" would try and tie together academic and extracurricular activities.

The proposal, made public on Feb. 7, was developed over the past year by the Task Force on General Education, which consists of Harvard professors and students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The new proposed curriculum would do a better job of making Harvard's academic environment relevant to the conditions of the 21st century, according to the Task Force's report.

And doing so "will provide an experience that is comprehensive without being diffuse, and that strengthens the link between life and learning in a way that will greatly benefit our students," Jeremy Knowles, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said in a press release.

Harvard students, meanwhile, seem relatively nonplussed by the proposed changes.

"It doesn't really seem to have changed that much," said Harvard freshman Sarah Godfrey of the curriculum proposals. "Instead of 11 categories, there are now eight, but they seem to mostly be renamed versions of the categories they had before."

The eight new subject areas are: Aesthetic and Interpretative Understanding, Culture and Belief, Empirical Reasoning, Ethical Reasoning, Science of Living Systems, Science of the Physical Universe, Societies of the World and The United States in the World.

Harvard freshman Naa Ammah-Tagoe said most students don't seem to be that concerned, but that she still had some questions.

"The one thing I'm confused about . is what they're going to do with our current requirements," she said. "The main thing they need to do is address how the switch is going to occur."

But, whatever the results, life goes on.

"For us, we're worrying about other things," Ammah-Tagoe said. "If it happens, it happens."

Plans for updating the curriculum have been privately discussed for the past five years. The current proposal will be debated for the rest of the year, and eventually voted on, by Harvard faculty.

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