Word: core
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Harvard College Professor Jorge I. Dominguez, a professor who teaches one such history class, asked openly in an open forum on the Core, “What does it mean to be an educated man or woman?” To follow through on Dominguez’s thought, it presumably does not mean to be selectively educated in “Health Economics” versus “Introduction to Investments.” Rather, it means receiving a well-rounded education that builds on what high school has provided students. And to this, it adds a first...
When this kind of selection process is replicated for 4000 other students (it is safe to bet that a slim minority masochistically challenge themselves in their Core selections), something else happens: the Core becomes ludicrously easy. For most Harvard kids, their Core selections represent the path of least resistance. I have no inclination to take Math 1a, and certainly not Math 21a, because I can always take “The Magic of Numbers.” Likewise, someone uninterested in philosophy would not fulfill their Moral Reasoning requirement by taking Philosophy 168: “Kant?...
...encouragement of the course being “painless,” according to the CUE guide. By their sophomore years, if they’re smart, Harvard students are looking at the “workload” and “difficulty” ratings of any Core course, and saving their energies for concentration courses that ultimately count in their GPAs. Harvard actually facilitates this process, making sure that a broad range of courses span the curriculum, some of which seem particularly targeted to Government or Pre-Med and so on. So, in picking...
...specialization takes place, and Harvard has never taken pride, as MIT has, in producing students who are essentially academic drones with blinders attached, divorced from all fields of study but their own. If the College is truly serious about the academic philosophy it advocates, an overwhelming change to the Core, the last vestige of a liberal education’s implementation, is needed...
After a painfully long time, the College is, indeed, reviewing a large part of undergraduate education. And any change is likely to be an improvement from the status quo, but in order to make an ideologically sound Core, the Curriculum Review Steering Committee must decide whether there should or should not be a broad, overarching set of knowledge that every Harvard graduate should know by commencement. And, additionally, the College must decide how serious their commitment is to liberal education—serious enough to incorporate Core grades into a student’s concentration GPA? Serious enough...