15/5/13 – Harvard Day 1

We were up early this morning and managed to get out of the hostel and down to the Back Bay subway station before 9am. Caught the two trains to Harvard Square and arrived in sufficient time for us to take the 10 am ‘Crimson Key’ walking tour of Harvard Yard before heading off to the Harvard Graduate School of Education for Day 1 of the Professional Education Program on Global Education. 

The tour of Harvard Yard was fascinating. We discovered that Harvard University was established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the country’s first chartered corporation (officially called ‘The President and Fellows of Harvard College’).

Its history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. It was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although never formally affiliated with a church, the college original primary role was the training of Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. However the curriculum and students gradually became secular throughout the 18th century and by the 19th century the College had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.

Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty-year tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.

James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became co-educational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gilpin Faust was elected Harvard’s 28th President in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32 billion as of September 2011.

 

The university comprises eleven separate academic units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area. Harvard's 210-acre main campus is centred on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3.4 miles northwest of downtown Boston. The business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Allston neighbourhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are located in the Longwood Medical Area.

 

Eight U.S. presidents have been graduates, and 75 Nobel Laureates have been student, faculty, or staff affiliates. Harvard is also the alma mater of sixty-two living billionaires, the most in the country. The Harvard University Library is the largest academic library in the United States, and one of the largest in the world.

In the course of our walking tour of Harvard Yard we visited the original building Massachusetts Hall. It is the oldest surviving building at Harvard and the second oldest academic building in the United States, after the Wren Building at the College of William & Mary. As such, it possesses great significance not only in the history of American education but also in the story of the developing English Colonies of the 18th century.

Massachusetts Hall was designed by Harvard Presidents John Leverett and his successor Benjamin Wadsworth. It was erected between 1718 and 1720 in Harvard Yard.

It was originally a dormitory containing 32 chambers and 64 small private studies for the 64 students it was designed to house. During the siege of Boston, 640 American soldiers took quarters in the hall. Interestingly, this military occupation caused Harvard, after the War of Independence was over, to be the first entity ever to sue the newly formed US Government.

Apparently the Continental Army was so short of ammunition during the early stages of War of Independence that it collected and melted down the brass door knobs from Massachusetts Hall to make bullets. Harvard gave the door knobs uncomplainingly but, after the war the Washington government never replaced or paid for them, so Harvard (who didn’t have a Law Faculty at the time) successfully sued to recover the cost of the replacements!

Another amusing tale involved student Ephraim Briggs who is praised for having been the means by which the sole extant book from the extensive collection given to the College by John Harvard was preserved. Briggs, a senior, had checked the book out of the library and had failed to return it (although it was long overdue) when the great fire of 1764 destroyed the second Harvard Hall. A third one has since been rebuilt on the site but it is used as a dorm not as a library. Which is a good thing because the university’s collection is now so vast that there are now over 70 libraries at Harvard with a collection of over 15 million books (second only to the Library of Congress in Washington).

There are 5 million books just in the main campus library (The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library) alone. This library has a great bequest story. Harry Widener was a keen student who loved books but who unfortunately drowned on the Titanic in 1912 before he could graduate. His mother lost both her son and her husband in this disaster and so she decided to endow a memorial library in their honour. But the gift came with conditions.





First she insisted that the library have an anteroom set up as a replica of her son’s bedroom and that this room be supplied with fresh red carnations (his favourite flower) delivered daily. Additionally she decreed that all Harvard dining rooms had to serve ice cream (his favourite food) at every meal and (so that no Harvard student would ever again drown at sea) she decreed that all undergraduate students should be taught to swim.

This last condition was dropped when federal legislation barring discrimination against the physically and intellectually challenged came into force in the late 1970’s. Mrs Widener’s Deed of Gift to the university further stipulated that, if any of these arrangements were not fulfilled, or if the physical fabric of the library was altered in any way, the building and all the books contained in it would revert to and become the sole property of the City of Cambridge. 

Graduation ceremonies at Harvard (and most other American universities) take place in the last week in May and there is sure to have a huge crowd of ‘Harvard Moms’ and ‘Harvard Dads’ at this year’s ceremonies since Oprah Winfrey will be delivering the ‘Commencement’ address!

Our final stop on the walking tour was at the famous statue of John Harvard. Here we hear about its ‘three lies’. Firstly – it is not a statue of John Harvard. As there is no known likeness of the man they used the nephew of a former President of the university. Secondly - Harvard was not the university’s founder (despite the ‘Our Founder’ inscription at the base of the statue) he was merely its first significant benefactor. And finally, the University was not established in 1638 as the inscription claims. It was formally created by Act of the Massachusetts colonial legislature in 1636. 1638 was simply the year when it took in its first students. For more info on Harvard and its fascinating past see:

http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Guide-g60745-i4295-Boston_Massachusetts.html

After the tour concluded I rushed off to the Graduate School of Education for the introductory session of their program on Global Education - looks promising. Today we looked at the definition of Global Education and some curriculum policy documents from local sources and around the globe. Glad to see Australia’s Curriculum Framework was held up as an example of best practice. Our final session was on promoting religious literacy for global competency. I found the presentation by Diane Moore (Senior Lecturer on Religion and Education, and Director of the Program in Religion and Secondary Education at Harvard Divinity School) quite challenging and as a result of her wisdom, I shall now have to re-think how we introduce the boys at Wesley to world religions.

I have been interested in the topic of Global Education for some time and hope to learn lots and make some useful contacts (there were 100 people in my class). At the cocktail party afterwards I met people not only from many states in the US but from Mexico, Qatar, China, Hong Kong, Jordan, Singapore, Argentina, Japan, Canada, Columbia, Switzerland, Taiwan, The Bahamas and Melbourne! It was a good night.