<p>I was actually having a conversation about this earlier, as I am plan to take a course in Ancient Near Eastern intellectual history to fulfill a core requirement. I doubt I'll be able to relate any of what I read to the modern situations of the Ottoman Empire and the current war in Iraq, but I do want to know that intellectualism and culture can stem from somewhere that is not Greece or Rome.</p>
<p>On that note, let me spell out what I think the prime arguments for open curriculum are, and open curriculum supporters (or current Brown, Amherst, URochester students) can help me out.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Open curriculum ensures that you are taking the classes that interest you. (I don't know how open curriculum schools treat major requirements; a college with a true open curriculum would also have a no major option, and I don't know how many colleges allow students to graduate without a major). If you're taking classes that interest you, you are going to be engaged in them. If you're not, you have only yourself to blame (or the professor, I guess).</p></li>
<li><p>Open curriculum appeals to a lot more students and helps foster overall intellectual diversity. At Brown, not only will you find the Chicago and Columbia-type scholars who want to become well-versed in a lot of subjects, but you will also find students whose sole purpose in life is chemistry or music theory or Russian. Students who are so passionate in one or two different fields and who strive to deepen their knowledge in that field by taking as many classes as they can tend to pepper the student body in a great, refreshing way.</p></li>
<li><p>Open curriculum models a real-life situation more closely. As an adult, freedoms abound: the freedom to choose a career path and an employer, the freedom to marry or remain single, the freedom to budget your money according to your priorities. The core curriculum, in comparison, could be seen as intellectual babysitting and a return to middle and high school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
[quote]
because a core is comprised of specific courses that are supposed to teach key skills, which will then enable to you become a better student while you study other things. Thus, the point of a core isn't to make sure you study certain areas, which one could certainly do with an open curriculum, but rather to enrich your intellect and make you a better scholar, an end which is best achieved through pointed, intensive courses, and an open-curriculum cannot allow for that. that's why I think it's beneficial to have a core.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>and in the absence of a core you can not expect students to take this upon themselves, or a school can not provide key skills through all its classes?</p>
<p>should knowledge and academic approach be guided, should creativity and originality be championed in all cases, or only within a certain framework?</p>
<p>do you think that a core only works at colleges full of people who consider themselves academics, or could one work at, say, a large state school?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I do think that when colleges and universities have a core common education program, they enhance the marketability of the graduates that are produced. There is some basic knowledge that graduates of XYZ institution will have.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>this is what i was saying, and i think it's a fair statement.</p>
<p>"do you think that a core only works at colleges full of people who consider themselves academics, or could one work at, say, a large state school?"</p>
<p>-I'd be willing to bet that some public schools do have cores...</p>
<p>"and in the absence of a core you can not expect students to take this upon themselves, or a school can not provide key skills through all its classes?"</p>
<p>of course a school can, but I think it's more productive when that's the POINT of the class. A common core is good because it provides a set of classes that are targetted specifically at enriching intellect, as opposed to just learning new facts.</p>
<p>I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a class that was not geared towards enriching intellect in some way... maybe Cow Tipping 101? Any college class you take will make you smarter in some way.</p>
<p>What I also think distribution requirements are good for is applying intellect in different ways. Just like you target specific muscle groups when you work out and make sure you hit all of them, I think a core curriculum can help you do that. </p>
<p>My best friend's mother, a literature professor at one of the schools mentioned on this thread, talks about a geology class she took during college. Though she nearly failed it, the class showed her something that occurred beyond the realm of human power and capabilities. As a humanities major, she had never really considered anything outside the realm of human action important before she took the class.</p>
<p>
[quote]
-I'd be willing to bet that some public schools do have cores...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>they do, or at least gen eds, but do you think it works there?</p>
<p>
[quote]
A common core is good because it provides a set of classes that are targetted specifically at enriching intellect, as opposed to just learning new facts.
[/quote]
i tend to agree, i was just playing devil's advocate a little bit ;)</p>
<p>"but do you think it works there?"</p>
<p>-I don't think it 'works' anywhere, but I don't see why it wouldn't achieve its goals at a public school.</p>
<p>^^ my line of thought was that you need students who are motivated to learn in order to achieve maximum benefit from mandatory classes, otherwise it would just be a waste of their time, because they won't try (e.g. did you take the foreign language sequence at Northwestern? because i did, and guess how much i actually learned/bothered to study :p - in an "academic" sense, i would have been better off being allowed to take what i wanted, it would have led to higher edification for me overall)</p>
<p>One of Chicago's past presidents had to resign because he lowered some of the core requirements and had to face tremendous outcry from faculty and from students. A Chicagoan is constantly reminded by the senior people here that we are taking a "watered-down" version of core for academic weaklings.</p>
<p>To stir up things more: the elephant in the room: All of you talk of the core without mentioning the western canon. The value of the core is the opportunity to come to grips with Polybius and Heraclitus and Dante and Erasmus. In other words, I propose that if you come out of distribution requirements without confronting Shakespeare at his best, say King Lear, and I believe you can graduate without reading Shakespeare, and if you come out of an open curriculum with a passionate focus on Pushkin, etc you will remain an uneducated man.</p>
<p>Not to know the best that has been attempted is to remain ignorant. I am not claiming that the western canon is the only best that has been attempted. But time is limited and at least in this part of the world learn your heritage, see the continuity in republican government that runs from Polybius thru Machiavelli and Hobbes to Hamilton and Jefferson.</p>