A Department of the Core Curriculum?
PrintBy Gabriel Martinez, August 16, 2010 in Pedagogy and Teaching, Professional Development, What is Education?
The 64-credit Core Curriculum is a major feature of my university. Students get introduced to history, literature, mathematics, Latin, theology, natural science, philosophy, politics, and art. Most of these courses are specified, so that (roughly) every student has a common topic of conversation. I think that we are rightly proud of our Core, of what it does for our students’ minds and souls, and of how it allows professors in disciplines like mine (economics) to teach the discipline as it is, knowing that the students will have the intellectual and moral resources to put it in context.
One difficulty with our structure, however – and this is not uncommon – is that there is no incentive for the Core to remain “general” education, as opposed to simply the area where students get introduced to a set of specialties, from which they will pick their major.
Every professor who teaches in the Core has an incentive to teach his course as the introduction to his specialty. Most of us put ourselves through years grueling study because we love our discipline – naturally we hope that students will, too, and that our departmental colleagues will share this love and will want to impart it to others. Reward structures are run by departments, which encourages specialization. Research is required by our profession, so we try to teach courses that could help us with our research.
The purpose of the Core, however, is quite different. It is simply to instill a love of learning, together with an awareness of the unity of truth and interconnectedness of intellectual pursuits. Depth and mastery of detail is not as important as learning to read with gusto.
(An education needs both breadth and depth. How can I claim to have instilled a love of learning in my students, if they don’t want to learn anything in particular? On the other hand, how can I attract students to my specialty if I don’t ask the big, unanswerable, speculative questions that make the specialty interesting?)
The problem is to evaluate a professor on his teaching of a Core class, independently of how that class serves other classes the professor teaches. The problem is to create incentives to ensure coherence across Core courses. The problem is to encourage quality scholarly research that draws from various disciplines.
A structure to evaluate teaching within the context of other courses; to ensure coherence across courses; and to encourage conversation and research already exists. It is called a department.
I’m curious to see what you think of this idea: a “Department” of the Core Curriculum, with its own chair, through which professors (who belong to departments but who teach in the Core) are evaluated for their service to this “general education” department, and encouraging (in the ways that normal departments do) formal and informal conversations.
Gabriel: As you are aware, I'm sure, the solution has been tried in several ways. Chicago, in the thirties, had a short experiment in exactly the direction you posit; a somewhat similar arrangement is represented by University of Kings' at Dalhousie, today. R. P. McKeon asserts that the Chicago experiment failed because, largely, graduate schools objected to the fact that the graduates were not conformable to their disciplines and departments -- at an institution which was founded in a university with graduate departments. Other attempts have tried to get around that problem. Speaking from memory: Reed College tenures in departments but appoints jointly in Humanities and departements; part of the tenure decision must include an evaluation of teaching in the Humanities program. At Eckerd College, all professors are hired on the basis that they will teach in the Western Civilization in a Global Context (2-course program). Columbia relies on tradition and the good experience of tenurable or tenured professors in teaching in the Core. Some Columbia professors, usually later in their career, become very concerned in their professional life with good teaching in the core. Thus, there are, at least, in four practical modes of structuring a core curriculum -- outside the purview of one discipline: Chicago: separate faculty from the rest of the institution and no departments; Reed: joint appointments in department and program; Eckerd: hiring contingent on agreement to participate in the program; Columbia: persuasive experience of colleagues combined with an extensive tradition. St. John's and other similar institutions represent the no department model in a college per se -- without a university context. Shimer does similarly, but recognizes majors.
Variations are, of course, wider, and your idea is a good one. I would simply point out that the Association for Core Texts and Courses (http://www.coretexts.org) does offer an annual conference on core texts and their various uses and faculty support in curricula, in programs, and in institutions. Thanks for your valuable discussion.
J. Scott Lee, Executive Director, ACTC