<p>I looked up the description of the "Thinking critically" piece of the Scripps curriculum. How is it different from what a good prof would be doing in a regular course? Any prof worth his/her salt would discuss issues of evidence, authorial bias, audience, etc... raise comparisons, draw links as a matter of course. That's what the Harvard profs are saying when they say they don'teach in the core differently from the way they teach their non-core courses. In fact, they probably have to fight the unease of non-majors at not being given "the facts" ("what should I say on the midterm about xyz when the profs give all sorts of alternative interpretations of the same thing?")</p>
<p>Differences. 1. Curriculum developed by entire faculty, across departmental and divisional lines. 2. Senior faculty lead all sectional discussions, often outside their own disciplines, after senior faculty deliver lectures in their disciplines. 3. Heavy emphasis on team learning activities outside the classroom. 4. When we visited, we saw 11 a.m. discussions sections continued over lunch, and then well into the afternoon. 5. In first class in the core, the entire first-year student attends the same lectures. (an academic "bonding" experience.) 6. No core class is taught from the perspective of just a single department or discipline.</p>
<p>The impact is likely as great upon the faculty as it is on the student body, as their allegiances to the college's core mission take precedence over departmental or personal concerns. I doubt such could ever happen at H. (or my d.'s school; and I never saw that at Chicago except in my own "committee" - social thought, which was defined by its interdisciplinary nature.)</p>
<p>Thanks. It would be totally unsuitable for S, even worse than Chicago's although the concept is very attractive for both students and faculty.<br>
I also think it may be more feasible at a small LAC than at a place where the first years number 1,700. One problem that is bedeviling the Harvard curricular review is trying to offer a common experience AND small classes at the same time (despite the fact that students had to be turned away from Michael Sandel's class when it reached 1,000, if I read the Crimson right).</p>
<p>Mini--you mentioned what I forgot to as the best thing about the Columbia Core (or any Core)--how it acts as a bonding experience. When S is reading Homer or Austen or the Koran, it's nice for him to know that every student in his grade is also reading that--it makes for great dorm, cafeteria, library conversations.</p>
<p>His main complaint has been a lack of consistency in teaching abilities, which have made his Core classes not as good this year as last year, when he adored his instructors.</p>
<p>I do not think any of this "core or not to core" debate is important at all. When all is said and done, most undergrads will have taken about 32 academic courses over the course of 4 short years. And of those 32, about half will be in the student's major or closely related subject matter. And probably 90% of what students "learn" will soon become surperfluous to their daily lives.</p>
<p>As one sage OSU alum stated, "The purpose of a university is not to teach the means of life only, but life itself; not only how to make a living but how to live."</p>
<p>If we leave college with the capacity to think clearly and creatively, to pursue the wonder of learning throughout our life, and to seek happiness in the Aristotlian sense, then and only then has the college and it faculties achieved it mission. It doesen't matter if you took a course in Serbo-Croatian literature(I did) or social cybernetics(did that too). What matters is that my college experience openwed up the wonders of the mind to me in a way which would have been otherwise impossible. It taught me to become a damn good engineer too, though that was far less important.</p>
<p>A shared experience is a nice bonus, but it should not be the primary reason for having a core. Indeed, S chose Harvard over MIT in order to be surrounded by people doing different things from him. The reason has to be intellectual rather than social.</p>
<p>Marite--you know I don't think it's the only way to go (both our older kids thrived in a rather open curriculum :)), but my argument is that the sharing, for my S, is an academic experience, first and foremost.</p>
<p>I'm always happy to have an opportunity to agree with Garland...and I do agree, about the idea of students sharing the study of great works central to civilization, regardless of chosen majors. I also agree with Mini, though; shouldn't much of that have been done in High School? And Marite made me chuckle, too. My son, always a 19th-century type (like his mother), will bring back those 1892 language fluencies in spades should he end up at Harvard. :)</p>
<p>My S loves the Chicago core. He has found interests he would have probably never encountered without it. It does add to the the self-selectivity of the place, most of the students are there because of the core. He likes it that he has humanities concentrators in his calculus courses and science concentrators in his Hum courses. He particularly likes the commitment to analysis and discussion across the core applying the Chicago style of argument across the curriculum, as well as getting a great foundation in the history and practice of human thought.</p>
<p>Marite -- I think the advantages of the shared experience go beyond social. It's a shared INTELLECTUAL experience. The students still bring to it all their differences of background and interest. (My kid, for example, took what he was learning in a probability and statistics course and applied it to an argument in Contemporary Civilization over whether or not he thinks the universe is deterministic.) </p>
<p>Also, every prof at Columbia in advanced courses not only can assume that students will understand certain references, but that they will have had early exposure to small classes in which they were expected to read difficult texts, come up with some original thinking, express themselves in class and on paper. A difference between a core class at Columbia and a distribution class is its size (capped at 22 or, in the case of writing at 11), and the concept that it's a discussion rather than a lecture class. You are not necessarily hearing from the world's foremost expert on Aristotle what he or she thinks Aristotle is saying. The faculty are drawn from many different departments and encounter texts outside their areas. The idea is a bunch of smart kids, led by a smart teacher, exploring texts and art and music that have made a difference in the world. Obviously this is not a uniformly great experience. It depends on the mix of students as well as on the teacher. But when it works, it's great.</p>
<p>My daughter, on the other hand, would have chosen to emigrate before enrolling in such a curriculum.</p>
<p>I have a weakness for a common experience; I just wanted to emphasize the importance of an intellectual rather than social rationale. It is indeed very very useful for instructors in more advanced classes to be able to know that their students have the same points of reference. We've seen the results of a lack of common curriculum at the k-8 level in our district. </p>
<p>I am a bit concerned, however, at our ready embrace of the idea that some of our kids should be exposed to a core and some do not have to.
Part of the core curriculum idea is normative: this is what every educated individual should know and this is why, we, as the faculty of college xyz mandate that all our students take it. The idea is not that if students don't like it, they should go somewhere else, but that it is a crucial, indeed, core, component of every student's education. The general distribution requirement is a soft version of this harder line.</p>
<p>The normative part of it has come down to: we want all our students to be able to analyze and to express themselves, to be exposed to deep thinking and (more recently) other cultures. As to what sorts or classes or readings best accomplish this, I agree with the professor who compared Columbia's core to the interstate highway system -- it would never be designed this way again from scratch. I would have been stunned if Harvard had attempted to adopt a true core. (Of course, if it had, Harvard would have gotten credit for inventing it.:) )</p>
<p>I'm not as concerned about the canon. And, I do believe that most students tend to pick a variety of classes (though my friend the molecular biologist confessed she avoided every course that required a paper through both undergrad and grad school, and I avoided every class that contained a whiff of math). The larger problem with distribution requirements is that students all flock to the classes they've heard are the best, and these tend to be large. Even the smaller classes are typically lecture classes, except for the new vogue of a freshman seminar.</p>
<p>I liked the desciption above of the University of Chicago's emphasis on analysis and argument throughout its curriculum. My goal when designing distribution requirements would be to attempt to do more than just "expose" students to various ways of thinking in the different disciplines. I would hope to find some way to require -- or at least set up the expectation -- that in a significant number of classes students will go beyond received wisdom, perhaps even challenge received wisdom, and that this is a habit they would develop from the first semester. There are many top level universities, with excellent students, where professors complain that they cannot get a class discussion going, get a student to ask anything beyond what will be on the test, or provoke students into challenging what they read in a book. I don't think anyone would have trouble finding a good intellectual argument at either Columbia or Chicago. The question is whether that is due to the experience of the core, or whether it is because of the self-selection of those who apply.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My goal when designing distribution requirements would be to attempt to do more than just "expose" students to various ways of thinking in the different disciplines. I would hope to find some way to require -- or at least set up the expectation -- that in a significant number of classes students will go beyond received wisdom, perhaps even challenge received wisdom, and that this is a habit they would develop from the first semester. There are many top level universities, with excellent students, where professors complain that they cannot get a class discussion going, get a student to ask anything beyond what will be on the test, or provoke students into challenging what they read in a book.
[/quote]
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<p>I've heard this concern, too, not about Harvard, interestingly, but about some other top-ranked colleges. But it has not been attributed to grade-grubbing as much as an unwillingness to challenge authority. The students are conscientious about doing the reading and can repeat the main arguments; they are less able to think about the way the arguments were put together, whether they are convincing or whether there can be some other alternative interpretations (say, great men vs. structural explanations for the same historical event: was it Louis XVI's fault, a crisis of rising expectations, the bourgeoisie trying to assert itself against the aristocracy and the clergy? How has the Revolution been explained by different generations of historians? what ideological biases did they bring to bear to their studies?). Many students would much rather be told what to think about such an event--often in a chronological narrative.</p>
<p>Maybe Columbia and Chicago do attract naturally inquisitive students willing to contribute their share of the discussion :) Elsewhere, discussions can be laborious.</p>
<p>Here is a description of the "Chicago" style of argument by a current U of C student in response to a post asking about what it was. I think most would want this for their students:</p>
<p>There's a certain way of arguing, of making a clear case for your opinion and backing it up thoroughly It's basically characterized by a strict adherence to evidence and logic, with exploration via examples and questions. Basically, you must always construct a careful, step-by-step argument, you must always define and thoroughly understand your terms and the terms of your text, and you must be willing to apply your ideas to hypothetical situations and difficulties in interesting ways. Making irrelevant points, trying to argue without strong evidence, and making assumptions without carefully defending them are all frowned upon mercilessly.</p>
<p>"I think most would want this for their students:"</p>
<p>Having taught there, it's good, but I always thought it insufficient, because it only focused on certain ways of "knowing" (one of the things Scripps does better.) I taught medieval art and philosophy. (And it was a very long time ago.) It was very easy to get the students interesting in the symbolism of the cathedrals, the theological background to the representations, the class structure of medieval society. I found it almost impossible to get them to engage in an understanding of stone carving, in the making of tools, in the dieing of cloth or of glass, or in the physics of quarries or of the construction of tall buildings.. And, frankly (I was a TA), the profs were no better (actually, in many cases, worse). Now had they engaged a physics prof, an applied arts prof, an engineering prof, etc. to teach alongside or in tandem (as they do at Scripps), it could have been very, very different.</p>
<p>Anyhow, I don't particularly "believe" in the core idea in any case (having spent five post-graduate years mastering it, I only then began to realize what I was still missing. LOL!); but it is wonderful for there to be many choices out there, and to watch students try to sort it out.</p>
<p>I was a TA as well, not in the core, but in combined undergrad/grad courses and found the undergrads to regularly outperform and out think the grad students, even those from other top tier schools. This too was a while ago. However, a close friend's daughter was much more recently a TA and she reported being continually surprised by the abilities of Chicago undergrads after going through the core. She reported being quite jealous that her rather good undergrad experience didn't prepare her nearly as well. I also agree that a core like Chicago's or Columbia's is perhaps not for everyone, but my S brought up an interesting point when I raised this with him. He said that one thing the core does for him is to show that he can excel and get excited about challenges he HAS to do rather than just doing what he wants to do. Interesting point.</p>
<p>idad -- I, too, just mentioned this discussion to my son. I asked him what students are expected to get out of the Columbia sophomore core class, Contemporary Civilization. He said it is not as much about learning ways to argue and present evidence, or about learning the Great Books, as much as it is about addressing big questions like: what is justice? what is society? They are expected not just to analyze what writers have said about these questions, but to attempt to apply the readings to contemporary life and to come to their own conclusions over the course of a year with the same group of fellow students, led by one teacher. I think it's not a bad thing that every sophomore -- from the potential physicist to the future I-banker to the would-be politician or architect -- is required to consider a question like:what is justice. </p>
<p>That particular class in Columbia's core came out of the reaction to World War I. Interesting, though, to think about it in the context of today's world events.</p>