<p>Knowing who led Dante is simply a basic indicator of whether the person has read the work or not. As was stated,it was a student survey administered in a dining hall, not a final exam. I’m sure the kids at Columbia would know the answer to that, and be able to explain the Theory of Natural Selection as well. I should add, I’m not advocating “forcing” anything on any school. I do think we would be better off if more schools offered a core taken by all their students than is currently the case. And I think that’s all the article in the OP was positing.</p>
<p>One more addendum: The historical study of christianity–as opposed to its theological study–shouldn’t scare ID or anyone else. It’s absolutely essential to the study of Western Civ. Not studying Christianity would be like “studying” the Middle East without studying Islam. Can’t be done. The “Christian Right Wing” thing is being so overdone here.</p>
<p>If Mills, Marx, Nietzche, and Freud are deemed to be among the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th Centuries by a panel of “scholars”, then why would anyone want schools to force their kids to read them? Th e “scholars” at places like the Hoover Institute really need to get their stories straight.</p>
<p>Well, I think everyone should study Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, don’t you? All part of the thread of Western Civ. One could make the argument that they were influenced by some of the thinkers mentioned, and that those writers were therefore harmful. Doesn’ mean academia should ignore any of them.</p>
<p>my Dad (an athiest) read to us aloud from the Bible when we were growing up because he felt it was <strong>essential to cultural literacy</strong> and also contained some pretty good storytelling! You are at a major disadvantage catching allusions in poetry and literature without thorough knowledge of the Bible.</p>
<p>“I do think we would be better off if more schools offered a core taken by all their students than is currently the case.”</p>
<p>I really can’t argue with that. But the content is important. One can’t be fully politically literate in today’s world without having read - and understood - the Koran, and be able to place it in its historical context. Or the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Or Mao’s 'little Red Book". Before these, the importance of Dante (or Mill, for that matter) - pale into insignificance. </p>
<p>We haven’t even gotten to music and art. </p>
<p>I think I will have to get to Matthew Arnold.</p>
<p>The Dartmouth Review is a lead publication in a list of right-wing campus papers supported by ISI, the publishers of “Choosing the Right College”.</p>
<p>Driver: didn’t mean forcing anything on a school, I meant steering one’s kid into a specific kind of curriculum because of fears they will avoid subjects otherwise.</p>
<p>For the record, I think my D got a superb and wide-reaching education at Wes. However, as my S makes his way through the Columbia Core, part of me would like to go back and do it myself. </p>
<p>Precisely my point. Why should a mandatory core curriculum be restricted to the historical study of a single religion? If the motivation behind the imposition of a core curriculum were really about fully-educated students, the recommended core would not include the study of a single religion.</p>
I would agree with that, and there are many more things that a contemporily politically literate person needs than can possibly be fit into a 4-year education. We all need postdoc-level work for that! I do like the fact that most distribution requirements include courses in non-western history (although again, here, as Mini says, the content can be very questionable in terms of value.) At the very least, though, American students should graduate from college with a decent understanding of how <em>our</em> society became what it is, whether you approve of the current outcome or not. And in order for our students to have a common context within which to hash this story out, it would be helpful if their college experience included at least a limited standard curriculum, instead of a cafeteria-style hodgepodge of disparate histories and grievance studies.</p>
<p>Yes. That’s why I am surprised when the ISI scholars spend an entire paragraph in a review of a college complaining that courses on Chinese history, culture, or literature count towards fulfillment of distribution requirements. It is very difficult to understand much about Mao without the context of his impact on Chinese culture.</p>
<p>required texts for HUM110 ( required class for all freshmen)
I like that everyone takes the same class, not just one from column a/b/c but the same class ( and one from column a/b/c)
I really want to read Herotodus, I have been reading several books lately that reference it. Daughters is packed away somewhere, any recommendations for translations?</p>
Once again, you misinterpret ISI’s motives. What they object to is that someone could graduate from college having survey-course familiarity with Chinese history, but have no concept of how our own society and system of government came to exist over millenia. That, I think, is the problem. If these kids don’t even understand how we arrived at the place we are historically, what context do they have in which to place their historical studies of other peoples? I think it’s great, fascinating, important to study other cultures and world history generally. But I think it’s culturally suicidal to neglect our own.</p>
<p>EK: The fact that everyone takes the same class at the same time was one of the selling points for my S at Columbia. He really liked the fact that at any given time, everyone on your floor, or in the dining hall, or in your other classes, was reading the same thing at the same time. And they all got to study together for the Lit Hum final.</p>
<p>Garland I agree it is a great unifier not just for the freshmen entering college but for the campus as a whole and it provides continutity for alumni.
It does seem that the book list has changed a smidgen over the years, and with the help of NASA some new source material may even be added.</p>
<p>A relatively new technology called multispectral imaging is turning a pile of ancient garbage into a gold mine of classical knowledge, bringing to light the lost texts of Sophocles and Euripides as well as some early Christian gospels that do not appear in the New Testament.</p>
<p>Originally developed by NASA scientists and used to map the surface of Mars, multispectral imaging was successfully applied to some badly charred Roman manuscripts that were buried during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Examining those carbonized manuscripts under different wavelengths of light suddenly revealed writing that had been invisible to scholars for two centuries…*</p>
<p>“I really want to read Herotodus, I have been reading several books lately that reference it. Daughters is packed away somewhere, any recommendations for translations?”</p>
<p>Strongly recommend David Grene’s translation (my old mentor at UChicago Committee on Social Thought. The de Selincourt translation recommended by Reed has long been superseded.) By the way, Reed’s choice of the Latimore translation of Odyssey and Iliad (Latimore also at UChicago Committee on Social Thought) is extremely poor, given the availability of the much superior (and easier to read) Fagles’ translations. If you are going to read them, you might as well enjoy the process. For wonderful background on 5th and 4th century Greece, all the books by Donald Kagan are superb!</p>
<p>Plotinus is also worthwhile - he provides the link between Christian and Arab civilizations (the Arabs thought his work was written by Aristotle). I’m writing on Plotinus’ view of beauty even as we speak (something for homeschoolers.)</p>
<p>Why anyone would think reading the Aeneid is worthwhile is beyond me. (I had to translate from it at Oxford - what a total waste of time!)</p>
<p>They do hand out Fagles translation for the Odyssey to read during the summer but they like for some reason to make things more difficult- my daughter has read the fitzgerald , lattimore and fagles translations ( middle high school & college)
I will look up the Grene translation thanks
I agree with you on the Fagles, makes it very clear and managable.</p>
<p>Could you define what you mean by “we” and “other peoples”? I assume that by “we”, you mean U.S. students and by “other peoples”, you mean non-US cultures, but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for other states, but, I know for a fact that top students in the Massachusetts public school system cannot get through high school without having studied the Greeks, the Middle Ages, the roots of the American Revolution, World War I, and World War II.</p>
<p>In many ways, I think it is the study of non-US history and culture that teaches us the most about what makes the American philosophy so special. That was certainly the case when I studied both Japanese and Soviet politics in college. Through the study of “other” cultures, you see themes (such as totalitarian dogma or the concept of ethnic uniformity) that would be extremely poisonous to the ideals of American freedom should they be allowed to take hold in our society.</p>
<p>“I agree with you on the Fagles, makes it very clear and managable.”</p>
<p>My older d. and I read them aloud to each other, over a period of 9 months, and provoked lots of great discussion.</p>
<p>For my younger d, the core consists of Bach, Schuman, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Albeniz, Granados, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Khachacturian. The whole idea of reading the Odyssey she’d find revolting, especially as you can get all the “core facts” by watching the tv video.</p>
<p>I actually loved reading the odyssey- we also had seen the seattle childrens theatre version which was great- unfortunately lately they are doing more plays aimed at younger kids rather than teens and while I like some of the more contemporary plays around town, I miss when SCT would do at least one Shakespeare or other classic every year.</p>
<p>Another argument for the open curriculum is the extreme difficulty of fitting in all the breadth requirements that are essential to being a well-educated, informed, culturally literate person. No matter what curriculum one takes, much work remains to be done after college. If an open curriculum would better inculcate genuine intellectual excitement for a given student, it may be the better road towards a lifelong education and ultimate knowledge.</p>
<p>My very favorite intellectual experience at Brown was a seminar I took as a second semester senior, with poet Michael Harper-- probably one of the most well-read and brilliant teachers I had. In every class, he would refer knowingly to several-- in his view-- basic, background scholarly works (none of them listed on the syllabus.) He would practically stagger backwards in shock when it was clear that none of us had ever read them! At least a tenth of class time was spent furiously scribbling in the margin of my notebook tome after tome that I would <strong>absolutely have to read</strong> before I could possibly consider myself even a marginally well-educated person. It was enough to make me queasy-- and here I was about to graduate with honors in poetry!!</p>
<p>I thank Professor Harper for giving me a visceral sense of the massive scope of everything “out there” that I did not know. At a time that could have felt like I had scaled the mountain, I humbly realized I had barely begun.</p>