Orientation Reading

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

<p><a href="https://classof2011.uchicago.edu/orientation-reading.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;https://classof2011.uchicago.edu/orientation-reading.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This is the reading the incoming freshmen must read before O-Week. It's an excellent and thought-provoking read, written entirely by University of Chicago professors, and I think it effectively portrays how the University of Chicago operates with respect to peer institutions. </p>

<p>(If you're interested in applying to UChicago and don't want to read the entire thing, just read "The Education Crisis" on pgs. 2-3. I think it's pretty easy to see if you would be a fit with UChicago if you only read that one section.)</p>

2

<p>the link didn't work for me. is this a link to the obook?</p>

3

<p>No, this is a link to the summer reading done by UChicago students. I'll post the content I found particularly appealing here, though:</p>

<p>I. The Education Crisis</p>

<p>I begin with four examples, which illustrate, in different ways, a profound crisis in education that faces us today, although we have not yet faced it. All illustrate the loss of insights contained in the statements by Rabindranath Tagore and John Dewey, two of our greatest educational reformers and thinkers about the role of education in a pluralistic society.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>It is a hot March in Delhi, in 2003. I am attending a high-level and very impressive conference on pluralism and the Indian democracy at Jawaharal Nehru University (JNU). Much of the conference is concerned with issues of education. All the papers on education focus on the content of required national textbooks, which are to be memorized and regurgitated on examinations. The Hindu Right, still in power, has been pushing for a content that supports their view of India's history, introducing new National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks for that purpose. The conference presenters, all opponents of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) aims, inveigh against this aim and propose textbooks with a different, more Nehruvian content. But nobody mentions the children: the stultifying atmosphere of rote learning in classrooms, the absence of critical thinking and all cultivation of imagination. Tagore (1861-1941), who was also the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, once wrote a fable called "The Parrot's Training" in which lots of smart people talk about how to educate a parrot, preparing a fine gilded cage and lots of fancy textbooks. Nobody notices that along the way the bird itself has died. The education debate at JNU, typical of much of the larger debate in India, reminds me uncomfortably of that story.</p></li>
<li><p>It is a surprisingly warm November in Chicago, in 2005, and I go across the Midway to the Lab School, the school where John Dewey conducted his path-breaking experiments in democratic education reform. The teachers are having a retreat, and I've been asked to address them on the topic of education for democratic citizenship, something that I undertake with some trepidation because I am sure they all know so much more about this topic than I do. As I defend the legacy of Dewey, focusing particularly on the sympathetic imagination, and introduce them to the very similar writings of Tagore, I discover that I'm not where I thought I was: the safe home of Dewey's ideas. I'm on a battleground, where teachers who still take pride in stimulating children to question, criticize, and imagine are an embattled minority, increasingly suppressed by other teachers, and especially by wealthy parents, intent on testable results of a technical nature that will help produce financial success. When I present what I thought of as a very banal version of Dewey's vision, there is deep emotion, as if I've mentioned something precious that is being snatched away.</p></li>
<li><p>One week later, again in the fall of 2005, I keep a phone appointment to talk with the head of the committee that is searching for a new Dean for the School of Education in one of our nation's most prestigious universities. Hereafter I'll just refer to the university as X. They want my advice, or think that they want it. Since, as a result of the first two incidents and many others of a similar nature, I'm already alarmed about the future of the humanities and the arts in primary and secondary education, I lay out for this woman my views about education for democratic citizenship, stressing the crucial importance of critical thinking, knowledge about the many cultures and groups that make up one's nation and one's world, and the ability to imagine the situation of another person, abilities that I see as crucial for the very survival of democratic self-government in the modern world. To me it seemed that I was saying the same thing I talk about all the time, pretty familiar stuff. But to this woman it was utterly new. “How surprising,” says she, “no one else I've talked to has mentioned any of these things at all. We have been talking only about how X University can contribute to scientific and technical progress around the world, and that's the thing that our President is really interested in. But what you say is very interesting, and I really want to think about it.” Taken aback by her surprise at what I thought was mainstream humanism, I start imagining the future of education in my country and in the world: initiatives focusing narrowly on scientific and technical training, producing many generations of useful engineers who haven't a clue about how to criticize the propaganda of their politicians, and who have even less of a clue about how to imagine the pain that a person feels who has been excluded and subordinated.</p></li>
<li><p>Finally: last year, I was invited by another great university, also in my own country, let's call it Y, to speak at a symposium celebrating a major anniversary. I was asked to speak as part of a symposium on "The Future of Liberal Education." A few months before the date of the event itself (February 2006), I am told by the Vice-Provost that the nature of the occasion has been changed: there will no longer be a symposium on the future of liberal education, and I am therefore urged to give a single lecture on whatever topic I like. When I arrive on campus, I press for an account of the reasons behind the change. From a helpful and nicely talkative junior administrator, I learn that the President of Y has decided that a symposium on liberal education would not "make a splash," so he has decided to replace it with a symposium on the latest achievements in science and technology.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>We are living in a world that is dominated by the profit motive. The profit motive suggests to most concerned politicians that science and technology are of crucial importance for the future health of their nations. I have no objection to good scientific and technical education, and I have no wish to suggest that nations should stop trying to improve in this regard. My concern is that other abilities, equally crucial, are at risk of getting lost in the competitive flurry, abilities crucial to the health of any democracy internally, and to the creation of a decent world culture. These abilities are associated with the humanities and the arts: the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a "citizen of the world"; and, finally, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person. Since Tagore and John Dewey were among the most important thinkers about these abilities, I will develop my argument by drawing on their writings and their educational practice....</p>

4

<p>You now know why UChicago holds such a negative view of standardized tests.</p>

5

<p>And I thought UChicago was awesome before . . . how could anyone want to go anywhere else? Man, I really really really hope I get accepted.</p>

6

<p>Don't we all...^_^</p>

7

<p>Thanks for posting that link. I enjoyed reading it. Here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. I am pasting the entire article below in case you cannot access it w/out registering. The author below is yearning for a Chicago-style core!</p>

<p><a href="http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i02/02b02001.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i02/02b02001.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>From the issue dated September 7, 2007</p>

<p>POINT OF VIEW</p>

<p>A Core Curriculum for Tomorrow's Citizens</p>

<p>By HARRY R. LEWIS</p>

<p>Should the 21st-century university have a core curriculum? The report of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education said nothing about general education, the learning that educated Americans should share. Instead the Spellings commission report highlighted broad access and measurable "value added" as the major challenges facing higher education. But limiting educational "leadership" to such criteria loses sight of colleges' larger purpose: to produce an enlightened, self-reliant citizenry, pluralistic and diverse but united by democratic values.</p>

<p>It is fashionable in university circles to say that a core curriculum is unnecessary — impossible, in fact. The contention is that students just don't have that much in common — nothing is "relevant" to all of them — and we should not "privilege" one way of looking at the world over another.</p>

<p>In any case, the argument goes, given what families pay for college, they should be treated like customers. Like patrons of a restaurant, students should be able to choose what learning they want. We don't care if they eat nothing but cheeseburgers; likewise, as long as they consume enough education and pay up, we should give them their diplomas. Who are we to say what is good for them? That was the spirit of a report on general education that Harvard University issued in the fall of 2005, after several years of work. Happily, it never came to a vote.</p>

<p>Others claim that a core curriculum is impossible because the explosion of knowledge over the past half-century has splintered the faculty into a hundred special-interest groups. Experts in diverse fields, we are told, can barely communicate with each other and can't agree on what students should know, other than skills such as speaking, writing, and quantitative reasoning. Those things are important, as the commission report recognized. But there is more to a college education than that.</p>

<p>Within academe it is hard to inspire support for a core for a simple reason. We have not come to agreement — indeed we have had little discussion — about the purpose of higher education. In the absence of any big concept about what college is supposed to do for students, both students and faculty members prefer the freedom of choice that comes with the elective curriculum. We would each rather do our own thing than embrace our collective responsibility for the common good. But the argument that students have nothing in common is false, and the conclusion that a college education should have no core is wrong.</p>

<p>It is true that students are less homogeneous than they used to be in ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic background. But, in all their diversity, they are the same in at least one important way: They all will be citizens. Most will be U.S. citizens. They will be voters and the political candidates for whom we vote. Moreover, foreign students inevitably learn something about our republic — from The Colbert Report, if not the classroom. Whether they return home or remain in this country, it is in our interest that what they learn be accurate.</p>

<p>By the time they graduate, students should understand how the American republic works and how it evolved. That came home to me when I voted in the last Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Three of the four candidates had graduated from my own college during the years I have been a professor and have watched the curriculum become ever more diffuse. What, if anything, did those candidates — one of whom was elected — learn about the core principles of our country?</p>

<p>We know that today many college graduates are ignorant of basic principles on which the U.S. government runs. Two reports, "The Coming Crisis in Citizenship," by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and "Losing America's Memory," commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, have documented the problem. Fewer than half the seniors surveyed knew that the Bill of Rights prohibits Congress from establishing an official national religion. Fewer than a third knew what "Reconstruction" was, and fewer than a third knew that the Voting Rights Act was part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program. Only 60 percent could identify the Constitution as the document dividing powers between the states and the federal government. Happily the news was not all bad: 99 percent correctly identified Beavis and Butt-Head as cartoon characters.</p>

<p>Of course students entering college should understand basic American institutions. Secondary schools haven't done the job either. But colleges can't say that civic ignorance is just the problem of high schools. Honoring the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy is part of the moral obligation universities assume in exchange for the vast freedoms, and tax exemptions, they enjoy.</p>

<p>I stoutly oppose federal interference in the content of college curricula. But institutions of higher education have a social contract with America, and we are not holding up our end of the deal. We owe it to the country to teach our students how democracy works.</p>

<p>More is at issue here than the dates in American history. Students need to develop a feeling for the preciousness of human freedom and self-determination, and the responsibility of citizens to act for the good of their country and not only in their personal self-interest. In college, they should learn how America's foundational ideas, of liberty and equality under the law, apply to the difficult problems with which it is struggling today. They need to learn that as citizens we have no one but ourselves to blame for our elected officials and their actions.</p>

<p>The basic point is made eloquently in Harvard's classic curricular report, General Education in a Free Society, written just after World War II, when civilization itself seemed nearly to have perished. Education, the report says, had to create "the common ground of training and outlook on which any society depends." The report states elsewhere, "a successful democracy (successful, that is, not merely as a system of government but, as democracy must be, in part as a spiritual ideal) demands that these traits and outlooks be shared so far as possible among all the people."</p>

<p>Of all forms of government, democracy most demands an educated, thoughtful citizenry. Our country is based on a concept, not on kinship. Poles will continue to be Polish as long as there is a Poland, but nothing holds America together except our intellectual legacy of democratic principles. If universities don't honor that legacy, our children will not inherit our nationhood genetically. They can receive it only through learning.</p>

<p>The Spellings commission properly emphasized access problems — who does or doesn't go to college. But broader access has educational consequences, so we should focus equally on what colleges teach. Many high schools don't offer Advanced Placement courses. As preparation levels become more varied, colleges can't teach students as though they were all the same, however bright and ambitious they are. We learned that at Harvard when we mistakenly consolidated our introductory life-sciences offerings into a single course while enrolling many more low-income students. A heterogeneous student body requires teaching designed for the flesh-and-blood students we actually have, not for idealized students prepared in imaginary high schools.</p>

<p>Ironically, students are much more interested in taking courses on the American republic than professors are in teaching them. At research universities especially, where the rewards come for creativity and novelty, the subject is not trendy enough for most professors. Because "bold" and "radical" are the highest forms of praise for academic thought, teaching what citizens should know brings little respect. Yet students hunger for enlightenment about their country. Enrollment in Harvard's course on the American presidency has averaged 165 over the past eight years — even though it satisfies none of Harvard's core requirements.</p>

<p>Harvard's recently voted curriculum expects all students to study American institutions to prepare them for "civic engagement." It is too soon to know what courses will fulfill that requirement. But I cautiously hope that we are stepping back from our relentless relativism and indifference to civic responsibility.</p>

<p>Idealism about the United States is not the same as blind patriotism. American institutions should not be propagandized uncritically in the academy, nor taught without reference to the rest of the world. The Constitution is not a partisan political document, and adherents of all political persuasions should join the call for the study of American institutions. Yet the plain truth is this: The spiritual ideal of American democracy will not survive if universities fail to preserve it.</p>

<p>Harvard's 2006 report on general education, from which the new curriculum emerged, was a striking effort to define a core. The professors who produced the proposal labored under difficult and thankless conditions. They had to start from scratch in an atmosphere of administrative instability. With the faculty under interim leadership, their idealism fell victim to turf battles in a series of redrafts and amendments. In dubbing one required area of study "The United States and the World," they were accused of implying that the world was merely America's "backyard." (The rubric was split into its two parts, "Societies of the World," and "The United States in the World.") So I certainly understand why the Spellings commissioners avoided the subject of curricular content and focused instead on access and accountability.</p>

<p>But a college education is more than a set of assessable skills and measurable outcomes. Our society depends on a view of humanity that universities should take a role in transmitting. The job of recalling higher education's public purpose now falls to the institutions themselves — to faculties, governing boards, and all who support their work. A thoughtful 21st-century curriculum can and should renew higher education's moral compact with America.</p>

<p>Harry R. Lewis is a professor of computer science at Harvard University and the author of Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future? (PublicAffairs, 2007). This essay is based on remarks at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.</p>

<p><a href="http://chronicle.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://chronicle.com&lt;/a>
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 54, Issue 2, Page B20</p>

8

<p>Thank you micromom.</p>