<p>Can some current or past uofc students briefly how a core class generally goes? I visited and interviewed and everyone i talked to seemed to have had a different experience with their core classes. I guess the experience is just different depending on the professor and the students in the class. From what I got out of the campus visit, the core classes are discussioned based and are meant to the give the student a broad base of knowledge and improve his writing, verbal, reasoning ect skills. But can anyone comment on the atmosphere of the classes: formal vs casual, does the professor tend to lead the discussion or just kind of start it and let it go where the students take it, do they typically branch out into other disciplines, ect. Thanks</p>
<p>Core classes are not all that thoroughly differentiated from other classes, so you can get almost any class type if you look for it.</p>
<p>Most sections of Hum, SoSc and to a lesser extent Civ are discussions of about twenty people. There will be lectures, but they are usually the minority of the class time. They are taught by a mix of full professors, grad students and lecturers, but many star people teach these classes.</p>
<p>These are your writing classes. You'll have at least two medium-length papers (4-10pp) each quarter with heavy feedback, including draft reviews at times. Instructors vary quite a bit, but intervention in discussion every two or three minutes is pretty common. They aren't generally that formal, but instructors try not to let them get far off of the readings.</p>
<p>A few sections and course titles will be lectures of around 100 with discussion sections.</p>
<p>Language classes are always small and frequent mixtures of lectures and drilling/conversation.</p>
<p>Math is typically lecture of 20-50 with room for questions, and generally optional problem review sessions.</p>
<p>Core science classes are absolutely all over the board. Two hundred person lecture-lab classes to seminars.</p>
<p>yeah sorry, i should have specified that i was talking primarily about humanities and social sciences courses.</p>
<p>so when my tour guide lead us into a small classroom with one table in the middle and chairs around it and said "your core classes will be in rooms like this", what he really meant was that some of the core classes and some of your other classes will be like this?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Exactly. Pretty much all of the ten-to-thirty person classrooms are set up with ring-tables like that.</p>
<p>ok, so what really differentiates the core from the normal distribution requirements that other schools have?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>The Core is designed to provide the foundation for a liberal education that prepares one to live in a democratic society. It has at its focus inquiry (or as Joseph Schwab would say, enquiry), and cross disciplinary thinking. From the college catalog:
[quote]
For a century the College of the University of Chicago has been an innovative leader in liberal education in the United States. Since the 1930s the curriculum of the College has varied in its details, but its intellectual foundations have been constant.</p>
<p>Undergraduate education at Chicago begins with a common core curriculum, conducted from the standpoint of multiple disciplines but beholden to none, which provides opportunities for critical inquiry and the discovery of knowledge. Chicago’s long-standing commitment to a rigorous core of general education for first- and second-year students emphasizes the unique value of studying original texts and of formulating original problems based on the study of those texts. The objective of our faculty-taught general education courses — which constitute the major component of the first two years in the College — is not to transfer information, but to raise fundamental questions and to encourage those habits of mind and those critical, analytical, and writing skills that are most urgent to a well-informed member of civil society.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>At many, not all, distribution requirements serve simply to ensure students sample different areas or pick up what might be considered a broad base of necessary skills that might be useful for a future career. At Chicago, the Core has been and will continue to be hotly debated and examined as to how well it achieves its purpose.</p>
<p>..blow. Period</p>
<p>The core is a considered attempt to design a curriculum that will systematically introduce students to the principles and methods of different disciplines, and also give them a shared vocabulary and set of reference points for discussing issues across disciplines. Distributional requirements assure that you get something of a taste of a few different, unrelated fields. The core tries to make certain that you understand something really important about whole groups of fields, and that you have that in common with most or all of your fellow students.</p>
<p>Whether it works or not is a whole different question. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some of the core courses at Chicago look like "Great Books" courses, others are very quirky (e.g., Human Being & Citizen vs. whatever they call the one about travel and collection). Some of the quirky ones work better than others. One way or another, everyone reads Smith, Marx, Homer, Plato, Genesis, Durkheim, Benjamin.</p>
<p>I have mentioned it before, but it is worth mentioning again, see Donald Levine's book, Powers of the Mind for a fascinating discussion of the evolution of the College and the Core and his vision for the future of liberal education.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Whether it [the Core] works or not is a whole different question.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In the case of S1, it has been nothing short of transformational.</p>
<p>I agree that the core can be hit and miss, but the important thing is to explore why it misses. The problem almost never lies with an apathetic class of students or an uncaring teacher; instead, it's usually an internal mismatch of some sort.</p>
<p>For example, I wasn't a big fan of my social sciences core (there, I said it, sometimes I feel like saying that in a room of Chicagoans can be blasphemous) and when I started to explore the reasons why I didn't like the class, I came to some pretty profound conclusions that had little to do with the class itself or the reading material.</p>
<p>S is currently in Human Being and Citizen and is really enjoying it. He keeps telling me he has never had a class like this and relishes the intense discussions. He turned in his first paper yesterday; we'll see how that goes. He had also signed up for Mind, thought it was OK, but not quite what he wanted (that internal mismatch unalove mentioned). </p>
<p>He dropped it, is taking three classes this quarter (a good decision given what else he's taking), and will do the Bio Core winter and spring. Has decided to take Classics in Social and Political Thought next year, and his Civ sequence junior year. He wants to "spread out that Core awesomeness as long as possible."</p>
<p>The Core Hum/Soc/Civ sequences were a big factor in him choosing Chicago, and he is happy his classes have more than lived up to expectations. "Transformational" is a good way to put it, idad.</p>