How much do you love the Core?

JHS
Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:51:35 +0000

My translation of the article: The author signed up for a class for which he had nothing but contempt in advance because he thought it would be easy. He has no interest in some of the broad areas the faculty has deemed necessary to a liberal arts education. He felt isolated because most of the other people in the class were excited by it and happy to be there. (And do you think a drama kid might have the same experience on the first day of a Game Theory seminar?) He sounds like something of a jerk. Why not acknowledge the woman he knows? Wah-wah-wah.

The Core is not perfect, and given that most if not all of the students who come to Chicago have high hopes for it, some degree of disappointment is almost inevitable. Many Hum sections seem to be magical; others turn out not to be. The Core bio course for non-science types is famously awful. But the History of Theater class my kid took to fulfill the same requirement that the op-ed writer was fulfilling was an exciting, demanding class taught by a world-famous scholar.