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The core curriculum was originally developed as the main curriculum used by Columbia University's Columbia College. It began in 1919 as a full treatment of what was considered by some as the canonical works of western civilization. It became the framework for many similar educational models throughout the United States. Later in its history it became a heavily contested form of learning, seen by some as an appropriate foundation of a liberal arts education, and by others as a tool of promting an anglo-centric by soley focusing on the works of Dead white men.
Structure
The core curriculum of Columbia University is an example of what was adopted by many eductional instutitions in the years following its introduction. The requirement heavy core includes that students are required to take a full year of Masterpieces of Western Literature (Literature Humanities); a full year of Contemporary Civilization (the great books that have framed Western thought and philosophy); a semester of Music Humanities; a semester of Art Humanities; three semesters of science including Frontiers of Science; four semesters of a foreign language; two semesters of courses concerning non-Western major cultures; and two semesters of physical education. Students are also required to pass a swimming test before receiving their diploma, a common feature among Ivy League schools.
The standard sources of the core curriculum can be seen below within a major course of Columbia Univeristy's core, Literature Humanities. These names include a first semester of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, along with the works: The Histories of Herodotus by Herodotus, The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Oedipus the King by Sophocles, and Medea by Euripides. These sets of works have been contested by many as supporting a Western-centric view, but the inclusion of books of the Judeao-Christian Bible (Genesis, Book of Job, Gospel of Luke, and Gospel of John), along with the works of Dante and Shakespeare, are pointed to as futher evidence of Western centrism.
History
Original Intentions
Nearly ironically, the requirement heavy core was seen at a time as a change towards flexibility in many American institutions of learning. Previously, a liberal arts education rarely focused directly on a major, but would focus on both Greek and Latin classics. The changes were first initiated in the 1880's with the inclusion of courses in study of a modern language. This change, along with a latter change in campus location preceding World War I set the stage for a major change in curricula focus after the war.
Criticism
With the later half of the 20th century came many concerns about the nature of college curricula. The civil rights movement, feminist movement, and various other socially concerned movements saw the core curriculum as inflexible to the needs of the day. It was worried that a curriculum soley based on what was considered by many as western figures would not allow for ethinic diversity and would promote a lack of knowledge and a level of ignorance about other cultures. In response to this many universities created a curricula that maintained categorical requirements, but in few ways constrained the classes needed to fulfill these requirements.
Response of Columbia
The response by Columbia College is still contraversial by many. An extended core was created. The expansion of required courses in response to criticism of Columbia University is a move contrary to most schools who had adopted this curriculum earlier in the 20th century. These schools have instead opted for a broad base curriculum in the opening years with much fewer specific requirments required of all freshmen and sophomore year students. Columbia University, largely in response to the concerns of a highly Western and Anglo-Saxon viewpoint, has added many courses to create an expanded core, a move that is contraversial to some and supported by others. The core curriculm is one type of learning, in direct contrast to an extended curriculum.
Arguments and contradictions
Given the arguments against core curricula, the curriculum pioneered by Columbia University was most highly contested in the era between the 1960s and the present. Remaining one of the few bastions of a pure core curricula, the University's results have seemingly contradicted this so-called "dead white men" result. The University has actually ended up being the most ethnically diverse in the Ivy League, a set of United States schools known for both high esteem, but also a tendency towards very small minority populations. This unique situation among colleges has allowed the European-based core curriculum, which is centered around a curriculum much like that found in English and German universities, to fade from its high primance. Seemingly though, the results are inconclusive of whether the core curricula that Columbia University spawned in other institutions was truly promoting a Western-centric view, or if Columbia University retaining its position with core curriculum has hurt or helped it through the latter half of the twentieth century.
History of educational styles
Historically, the change in educational styles in most liberal arts colleges and universities has been much different from that first done from the Enlightenment, when the institutions of learning were in and of themselves recentralized after the Scientific Revolution, and arguably, prepared the way for specific learning styles during the Industrial Revolution. In this way, the new universities of the United States were left specifically different than those found in Europe. With the way that educational systems were constantly being revisited in the 19th century, likely most notably recounted in Charles Dickens's Hard Times, the industrializing nations were looking for models of curricula. The question comes at this point as to if even it can be said that if it was specifically Columbia Unversity that developed the core curricula, or that if it was the one that most speedily and famously coopted it from European learning and soruces.
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