Preregistration is the Enemy of Liberal Education
The Crimson | Harry R. Lewis ‘68
With preregistration on the docket for a spring Harvard faculty vote, Harry R. Lewis, Computer Science professor and former dean of Harvard College, makes clear what is really being decided: an undergraduate education that’s a voyage of self-discovery vs. “education as training” requiring a careerist approach of constraint, not freedom.
“Previous-term registration is the natural extension of this career-focused approach to undergraduate education. Especially for first-year students, preregistration makes educational sense only if you think students should arrive knowing what they want to study and college should help them study it.”
The humanities will be hit the hardest, Lewis argues. “For every prospective English concentrator who stays in the field…two will not show up in English courses at all, they and their families having focused…on the importance of courses they associate with material return…no worries about distraction by academic curiosity.”
Messy? Yes, Lewis admits, retelling a story of a student from France who thought the first week of class chaos to be preposterous: “What I considered joyful first-week energy he thought appallingly disrespectful, with students lugging their bicycles through the classroom while I was lecturing. ‘Welcome to Harvard, and to America,’ I told him. ‘You can do what you want here, and that is the way we like it.’”
Harry R. Lewis ’68 is the Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science and former Dean of Harvard College.
Updates:
5/9/22 | Crimson |FAS Dean Gay ‘Satisfied’ with Vote to End Shopping Week in Favor of Previous-Term Registration
5/4/22 | Crimson | Harvard Faculty Vote to Eliminate Shopping Week in Favor of Previous-Term Course Registration System
4/26/22 | Crimson | Students Rally to Save Shopping Week, Urge Faculty to Vote Against Previous-Term Registration
