I hope I’m not too late to the party, but I wanted to address Sam and Kathy on Newsweek’s Harvard and religion article. They both agree that Harvard should implement a religion requirement, but a careful look at General Education’s mission reveals no room for such a requirement. In specific, I took issue with Kathy’s argumentation here:
Undoubtedly for some Harvard students, class discussions about religion are probable, if not inevitable. But the fact is, this experience is by no means one shared by the entire student body…Isn’t it the point of standardized curricula to ensure that students like these don’t fall through the cracks? If religion is as important as we profess it to be, shouldn’t we implement a mechanism such that every student graduates having engaged in religious dialogue?
In short, no. I think Sam reveals his soft, sensitive (but wrong) side in admitting that creating a religion requirement similar to the “study of the past” add-on would be a “good idea.” Just because religion can be a difficult issue (in ways that chemistry isn’t) does not mean we should grant it special dispensation in Gen Ed. Having waded through the Report of the Task Force on General Education, which I should add, is difficult to wade through, I believe that a religion requirement does not jibe with the stated mission of General Education. Sam is absolutely correct in saying that Gen Ed doesn’t actually teach you anything; if I’m parsing the task force’s words correctly, the fundamental value of a liberal education is what it does to you:
On the contrary, the aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to re-orient themselves.
Gen Ed does not teach facts or any particular subject; it tries to impart broad critical skills that are vital for “a world that is dramatically different from the world in which most of us grew up.” In this regard, it shares some similarity with the Core Curriculum. “Ways of knowing” are more important than simply knowing. Gen Ed has four explicit goals:
General education prepares students for civic engagement.
General education teaches students to understand themselves as products of—and participants in—traditions of art, ideas, and values.
General education prepares students to respond critically and constructively to change.
General education develops students’ understanding of the ethical dimensions of what they say and do.
These are soft goals. They do not purport to teach you economics or what the atom looks like. They are all about deeper understanding and preparation to respond to a “deeply divided, unstable, and uncertain world.” (Task forces sometimes get carried away.) But none of these goals speak to the fact that students must engage with religion. Religion is no doubt an important subject for the future, but so are developmental economics, race relations, and computer science. A religion requirement is fundamentally different from a “study of the past” one because studying the past is a way of knowing, a skill to evaluate the scary future, not a subject area of study.
Demanding religious dialogue is like demanding economic dialogue: pervasive in everyday life, but not fundamental to the heart of a liberal education as stated above. Again, it’s not about the topic, it’s about the process. Religion belongs exactly where it is in the Gen Ed curriculum now, within Culture and Belief. That word “belief” is infinitely more than economics, race relations, or computer science get in the Gen Ed subject areas: no mention. Is religion important as a topic? Yes. Does it deserve special placement in the General Education curriculum? No.
