Word: core
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It’s clear that the Core Curriculum needs to be replaced. On this page and in University Hall, the Core and its “approaches to knowledge” philosophy have been maligned for not providing enough concrete knowledge. A system where students can fulfill one history requirement by taking a course on 15 years of Cuban history may be great for cocktail parties, but it is hard to see how seven courses in the Core Curriculum could form the foundation of what we believe should be the best program of studies in the world. A higher...
...must include a theoretical component aimed at teaching students about the important ideas that shaped the subject matter. Ideally, this would involve reading selections from the great thinkers in each field. Through these theories, students would learn different analytic approaches to knowledge, much like they do in the present Core Curriculum. Finally, an HCC should have a practical or experimental component where theory is applied to case studies (in lectures as well as in sections), allowing students to put the theories and analytical tools into practice. An interesting add-on might be to devote the last few weeks of section...
...efforts stalled by a tangled web of earnest, academic motivations, what the Gen Ed Committee needs right now is some inspiration. Often, the toughest theoretical problems can be solved with one concrete example. We can name at least three. These courses succeed in meshing approaches to knowledge and core knowledge, and in educating students about the historical, theoretical, and experimental aspects of their topics. Gen ed classes will never fulfill everyone’s expectations to the fullest. But by following the examples of a handful of model courses, both the minutiae of gen ed syllabi and the broad guiding...
Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60, reporting on the progress of the curricular review’s general education committee, repeated previous recommendations that the Core be abolished in favor of distributional requirements, though he also said that his committee has yet to reach a consensus on what the purpose of general education should...
...unapologetic, perfectly reasonable. Unknown Core was, he asserted, helping HCS: they had found a vulnerability in our server and had pointed it out to us while doing only a very small amount of easily repairable damage. Wasn’t this better, he asked, than had some other more malicious hacker come along and tried to use the security breach to more nefarious ends? He wasn’t interested in my suggestion that he might have emailed us instead. He didn’t seem bothered by my claim he was just pointing out holes in Swiss Cheese anyway...