Brewton does Dartmouth
Tom Brewton at View from 1776 did a piece on the lack of basic knowledge among Dartmouth kids a week or so ago, and it garnered some attention and argumentation.
The lack of a core curriculum doesn't just apply to the great Dartmouth College, it applies almost everywhere nowadays except at Columbia College, and at the University of Chicago, which I believe wisely borrowed Columbia's required series of two years of their required "Humanities" series and two years of "Contemporary Civilization" (which means Classical Greece to 1900, approx.). And because it all flows and inter-relates, with the Humanities series roughly covering stuff that is contemporary with the stuff in CC, you inter-link - and remember it forever. For example, you could be reading the Aeneid in Hum, studying Roman governance in CC, and looking at the effect of Greek art and architecture on Roman civilization ideally at the same time.
You can know that these kids will know Augustine from Aquinas, Sophocles from Socrates, Luther from Lucretius, and Burke from Locke, whether they are Math majors or Art History majors. (And they will know, in detail, how the steps and the columns of the Parthenon were carefully mathematically distorted in shape to create an illusion of flat steps and straight columns.) I always felt there could have been a concurrent History of Math, Science and Techology too, as part of the core, but I guess you have to draw a line somewhere.
What's the point? The point is that colleges with core curricula have the confidence to make a statement about what they believe is foundationally important for a citizen, with a college education, to know.
Columbia's Core Curriculum here. Brewton's piece here. (I know I will get annoyed emails about other excellent colleges with similar curricula - and I'd like to know, but please, be respectful.)
