Core curriculum
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Contents
Structure
Requirements
The Core Curriculum is an example of what was adopted by many educational institutions in the years following its introduction. It requires students to take the year-long "Masterpieces of Western Literature" course (known as "Literature Humanities" or Lit Hum); another year of "Contemporary Civilization" (known as CC); a semester of "Music Humanities"; a semester of "Art Humanities"; three semesters of science including the semester-long Frontiers of Science course; the semester-long "University Writing" course; four semesters of a foreign language; two semester-long courses about non-Western major cultures; and two semesters of physical education. Students are also required to pass a swimming test before receiving their diploma, a common feature among Ivy League colleges.The current head of the Core Curriculum is Philip Kitcher.
Works
The Literature Humanities course includes such books as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Histories of Herodotus by Herodotus, the Oresteia by Aeschylus, Oedipus the King by Sophocles, and Medea by Euripides. Texts then go beyond Greek works to the Bible (Genesis, Book of Job, Gospel of Luke, and Gospel of John), Dante's Inferno, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, and Shakespeare's King Lear.More recent additions to the Curriculum have included Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse , Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.
The Contemporary Civilization course features the great books that have framed Western thought and philosophy, by authors like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Ibn Rushd also known as Averroes, de las Casas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Machiavelli, Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx and Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Fanon, and Foucault, as well as religious texts like The Hebrew Bible, The Bible, and al-Qur'an. Additionally, thinkers such as DuBois, Woolf, and MacKinnon are read and discussed.
Table of Core Curriculum Requirements
| Course | Semesters Required |
|---|---|
| Literature Humanities | 2 |
| Contemporary Civilization | 2 |
| Art Humanities | 1 |
| Music Humanities | 1 |
| University Writing | 1 |
| Foreign Language | 4 |
| Frontiers of Science | 1 |
| Other Science | 2 |
| Major Non-Western Cultures | 2 |
| Physical Education | 2 (only one unit each) |
History
Original Intentions
Ironically, the requirement-heavy core was seen at a time as a change towards flexibility in many American institutions of learning. Previously, a liberal arts education rarely focused directly on a major, but would focus on both Greek and Latin classics. The changes were first initiated in the 1880's with the inclusion of courses in study of a modern language. This change, along with a latter change in campus location preceding World War I set the stage for a major change in curricula focus after the war.Criticism
With the later half of the 20th century came many concerns about the nature of college curricula. The civil rights movement, feminist movement, and various other socially concerned movements saw the core curriculum as inflexible to the needs of the day. It was worried that a curriculum solely based on what was considered by many as western figures would not allow for ethnic diversity and would promote a lack of knowledge and a level of ignorance about other cultures. In response to this, many universities created a curriculum that maintained categorical requirements, but in few ways constrained the classes needed to fulfill these requirements.Response of Columbia
The response by Columbia College is still controversial to many. An extended core was created. The expansion of required courses in response to criticism of Columbia University is a move contrary to most schools who had adopted this curriculum earlier in the 20th century. These schools have instead opted for a broad base curriculum in the opening years with much fewer specific requirements required of all freshmen and sophomore year students. Columbia University, largely in response to the concerns of a highly Western and Anglo-Saxon viewpoint, has added many courses to create an expanded core, a move that is controversial to some and supported by others.Some common defences for the curriculum are:
- The Core is really about learning how to think, not about accepting the ideas presented.
- Western culture is still heavily influenced by the philosophy and literature included in the Core.
- Many of the movements that object to the content are largely reactions to the Western canon, or heavily criticise the canon, so knowing what is being rejected can help in the understanding of the texts.
- If students didn't want to take Core classes, they shouldn't have gone to Columbia.
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