The Core Is Mother, The Core Is Father

Through the four years I was there, there was a low level war being constantly waged among faculty at Franciscan University over whether the university should have a humanities core curriculum, and if so, what form it should take. From the trickles I've heard back, five years later the war continues to this day.

Since most of the small set of strongly Catholic liberal arts colleges (Steubenville, Thomas Aquinas, Christendom, Magdalene, Ave Maria, I'm sure I'm missing one or two...) have a core curriculum (or in the case of TAC are a core curriculum), Steubenville has always seemed to feel a little inadequate about the topic.

I remain unsure what to think about the core curriculum idea. On the one hand, I do feel strongly that people are better educated (as people, as Catholics, as citizens) if they have a basic grounding in literature, philosophy, theology and history. On the other hand, the problem with having specific courses which everyone is required to take is that there is a tendency for the quality of those courses to gravitate towards the median skill and interest level of those students. Which is why one generally tried never to take a 101 level course in a topic one is actually interested in -- such courses are far too often tailored to the needs of those who are not interested, and refuse to become so.

It annoyed me no end in college that my Business and Computer Science major friends tended to treat the humanities in general with "How do you say, 'would you like fries with that' in Latin?" derision. Indeed, it still annoys me quite a bit to hear people assert that no responsible man who wants to be a provider for his family would get anything other than a technical degree. (Though now I always get told "except for you, of course" since I've proved my worth by getting paid to do things they don't exactly understand with marketing analytics.) But the fact is that requiring these people to read Homer and Dante or Plato and Aquinas would not change their minds -- it would just result in having more disruptive students in literature and philosophy classes. Many people in the world aren't terribly interested in acquiring a classical education, and I'm not sure that making them do so against their inclination would actually help a whole lot.

I suppose the whole thing goes back to whether most people actually go to college to get an education, or just to get training. Surely, I think everyone would be better of with an education rather than technical training. And given that few people are collected enough to fully know their own minds at the age of 18 or 19, maybe requiring them to take a core curriculum may be the best way to introduce them to the elements of their culture that they would not otherwise seek out. And yet I have a hard time wishing a bunch of computer science students who would raise their hands and say, "You may know what an essence is, but five years from now I'll be making twice what you are and you'll still be teaching annoying kids like me" on anyone...