This is interesting, and reminds me of Mark Taylor’s essay in some ways. Harvard College’s English and Classics departments have redesigned their core concentrations. In the English department, for example:

Incoming concentrators will now be expected to fulfill a single requirement in each of four “common ground” areas: Arrivals (focusing on how British literature, from its beginnings in the seventh century, is a product of cultural importation); Diffusions (dealing with the dispersion of “British” literature across the globe, beginning with England’s seventeenth-century expansion and imperialism); Poets (emphasizing non-dramatic poetry); and Shakespeares (treating the Bard and his heirs in a cultural context).

I’ve watched as my eldest son has worked his way through the very extensive literature standards required in his high school, and I wonder to what extent Harvard is responding to innovation in secondary school curricula, and how much it may lead to innovation there?

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