Republishing The Magaziner-Maxwell Report
During the '66–'67 school year, a group of students and faculty members at Brown University came together in hopes of improving education at Brown. The group — which came to be known as GISP (Group Independent Studies Project) — undertook an extensive study of undergraduate education, its history, and the latest ideas for making it better. The end result was a 400-page tome authored primarily by students Ira Magaziner and Elliot Maxwell, originally called Draft of a Working Paper for Education at Brown. In addition to an impressively thorough summary of the GISP's research, the report proposes a philosophy of education for Brown and a new curriculum to implement that philosophy. In 1969, following student demonstrations and intensive self-study, the faculty at Brown adopted the New Curriculum, implementing the philosophy and many of the specific recommendations made in the report. With some tweaks, the New Curriculum remains in force at Brown to this day.
The Magaziner-Maxwell Report stands as an example of student-driven curricular reform done right. Unfortunately, it has never seen the wide dissemination it deserves. We hope to breathe new life into the report by publishing a new edition, in print and online. This new edition will serve as a resource for students at Brown (and other institutions with open curricula) interested in putting their educational experience into context; for students and administrators considering curricular reform at other institutions; and for curricular freedom skeptics who would like better understand the arguments for curricular reform.
We are making our re-formatted edition of the Report available online:
The awesome new paperback edition is available in print:
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Available in-store and online for $7.75 from the Brown Bookstore, an independent bookseller.
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Donate at least $20 to the Open Jar Foundation and receive a copy of the Report for free.
The Open Jar Foundation does not seek to earn a profit from sales of The Magaziner-Maxwell Report. Any net revenues earned on sales of the Report due to minimum pricing obligations or rounding error are used to offset the costs of copies of the Report provided for free to academic institutions and other qualified users. For donation reporting purposes, the value of one copy of the Report is $7.75.
