<p>I know that every college has its own culture and history. But wouldn't it be a good thing if Grinnell had a core curriculum? After all, it is a liberal arts college. Doesn't it seem a bit like a "60's thing" to have no distribution requirements? Wouldn't it be more expansive if students completed classes across the disciplines, exposing them to many different subjects? </p>
<p>Please don't take this as an attack on the self-governing-student culture. I am only suggesting that a core curriculum may well be an idea who's time has come back. Perhaps that is why President Anderson listed it as a recommendation in his final Annual Report in the Grinnell magazine. </p>
<p>Isn't that what a Liberal Arts education is all about?</p>
<p>My apologies President Osgood (not Anderson). I am so bad with names. Plus he is now officially retired from Grinnell. But after 12 years as President, he no doubt knows an incredible amount about Grinnell.</p>
<p>“Isn’t that what a Liberal Arts education is all about?”</p>
<p>Well, that’s the crux of the matter: It’s difficult to get consensus on what a liberal arts education is all about and how to structure a curriculum to promote this. </p>
<p>Colleges and universities have taken three general approaches to this issue:
- A core curriculum, e.g., Columbia and Chicago;
- Distribution requirements across broad areas of knowledge, e.g., humanities, social sciences, natural sciences;
- Distribution requirements across modes of inquiry, e.g., quantitative analysis, moral inquiry, historical analysis, and so on.</p>
<p>Each of these approaches has its pros and cons, and none of them has proved entirely satisfactory.</p>
<p>This post is from Father of the Boarder in the “Why Grinnell” post when someone raised the issue of core curriculum:</p>
<p>“It does not have any – unless you seek “special opportunities” – such as off campus study. Core curriculum died in 1970 – this makes Grinnell unique. In the age old days of 1978 I fought to keep this at Grinnell. I requested all of the transcripts of the graduating class – and they obliged with appropriate redaction [my first subpoena]. I showed that about 97% of the students had achieved core curriculum without Grinnell’s requirement. Based upon this, I asked if their students would be happier and more attentive voluntarily taking a core curriculum, or would they be better if commanded to take the curriculum. Core and “distribution requirements” did not become mandatory and remain basically nonexistent, even today.”</p>
<p>Not sure what he defined as “core curriculum” but it sounds like the student body, at least at that time was fulfilling some sort of distribution requirement without being directed. I doubt it’s changed much and I suspect it’s true at most schools.</p>
<p>The main advantage that I can see to a ‘core curriculum’ like Chicago has, is that it gets the entire freshman class talking about the same academic topics at the same time - possibly a good idea at a larger school. Not an issue for Grinnell. I suppose the distribution requirements would force the recalcitrant 3% at Grinnell to take a course or two they didn’t want - but frankly, don’t you think you’ll have enough required courses associated with your major and with preparing for whatever else you plan to do (study abroad, a research project, etc…)?</p>
<p>They definitely try to encourage people to take different and varied classes, but they don’t force them to. If a person chooses to take a class, I believe he or she will almost always be more receptive to the material.</p>
<p>My son’s adviser finally convinced him to take one science class. He picked psychology and didn’t enjoy it much. He has loved the freedom to study what he wants. Lots of history, literature, languages and some religion classes. No math, but he’d already had AP Calc. I think he picked a sufficiently varied course of study on his own.</p>
<p>I really think that, to a certain extent, the statement that Grinnell has no core curriculum doesn’t reflect reality. While we don’t have an official set of classes and distributions everyone has to take (a system which has both pros and cons), we do have a lot of different course requirements. For instance, I’m a poli sci history double major, and part of my major requirements is econ 111, statistics, and 2 years of a foreign language. If i wanted to concentrate, every concentration is designed to force students to take classes in the fields outside their own majors: Policy Studies makes humanities students take one of three science classes, and vice versa. Also, I know several students whose advisors made them sign a contract at the beginning of the year that says they will take classes outside their field. So the open curriculum thing is a good selling point for the school, but in practice it’s pretty rare.</p>