<p>AN interesting and toughtful take on the subject of the core from a rather controversial figure (for some):</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n14_v48/ai_18517992[/url]”>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n14_v48/ai_18517992</a></p>
<p>Great essay, thanks for posting it.</p>
<p>My S chose UChicago largely because of its core. He has no idea what he wants to major in and when he read a post by a Chicago grad who had majored in history, but was admitted into a top medical school because she had completed the science & math requirements of the Chicago core, he was sold.</p>
<p>Good article. Worth noting, however, that St. John’s does NOT have a core curriculum, but an “all-required” curriculum. That’s a HUGE difference. At Chicago, well less than half of one’s courses over four years would be in the Core. At Scripps, it would be precisely three courses. Relatively speaking, Chicago and Scripps and Reed would be closer to a totally open curriculum than to what is required at St. John’s.</p>
<p>I took core (at Chicago) as a graduate student. It was a great intellectual adventure as finally, coming out of engineering, I was able to put the things I already knew into some sort of context. Wonder if core isn’t wasted on first year undergraduates. Maybe a common exam at the end for everbody to guarantee some sort of cultural literacy. Isn’t that i.e exam schools the Oxford approach Mini? By the way, Jacques Barzun the very apostle of core at Columbia had real philosophical reservations about the St. John’s Great Books approach. Like Feynmans Lectures on Physics, another item from the golden age, it is simply too difficult for the majority of undergraduates. For graduate students it challenged and put together everything they kney but for undergraduates, even at Caltech in 1962, it was way over their heads.</p>