Core Curriculum

The Core Curriculum is the distinguishing characteristic and hallmark of an undergraduate education at Columbia. Often imitated, rarely credited, and very hyped, the Core is the centerpiece of the undergraduate curriculum at Columbia College. SEAS students take a modified version of the core, as do GS students. Barnard College has an entirely seperate curriculum, the Seven Ways of Knowing.

Requirements

The Core consists of two sets of requirements. First are the 6 classes that every CC student must take in order to graduate, a collective, shared, experience, the "core of the core," so to speak. These are the year long courses Literature Humanities (Lit Hum) and Contemporary Civilization (CC), and the semester long courses Art Humanities (Art Hum), Music Humanities (Music Hum), University Writing (UW), and Frontiers of Science.

Additionally, CC students must fulfill a series of requirements for which they are free to choose the classes. These are 2 Major Cultures classes, 2 semesters of Science/Math, 2 semesters of PE, 4 semesters of a Foreign Language (placement in an advanced course/placing out are options), and of course the Swim Test.

Criticism

Despite the hype and praise, the Core has a number of critics. The primary charge levelled against the Core is that it's just a collection of "Dead White Men" with a few token minority and women authors.

In addition, the Core is hardly a uniformly positive experience. Your experience in each class will be contingent on two factors: 1) The quality of your instructor and 2) the quality of your classmates. Don't underestimate the impact that the 20 other people in the room can have on your class experience. A good group of classmates can easily redeem a class with an average teacher.

A common complaint about Core classes is the relatively high percentage of sections that are NOT taught by Columbia faculty, and instead are led by graduate students ("Preceptors" is the official term). Landing a section with a graduate student is not the kiss of death- in fact some of the best core class instructors are grad students, and some of the worst are high profile professors.

Lit Hum

• In Spring 2007, 9 of 58 sections of Lit Hum are being taught be Senior Faculty, including one taught by a retired professor and another by an assistant dean at the Law School, another taught by a visiting professor from the University of Chicago, and another faculty member teaching only section open to GS students. 17 are being taught by junior faculty, of whom 2 are temporary appointments, 1 is a post-doc fellow, and only 2 hold the more seniors Associate status. 9 sections are taught by graduate students and 15 are taught by 10 instructional lecturers, 5 of whom teach 2 sections each. 8 Section leaders are not in the directory.

Art Hum

• In Spring 2007 only 3 of 30 sections of Art Humanities were taught by Columbia professors, including 1 temporary appointment.
• The rest were taught by 16 graduate students, 4 post-doctoral fellows, 2 "Lecturers" (including one who's listed as a student at the School of Continuing Education), and 4 unlisted in the directory but not listed on the department faculty page either.

Music Hum

The Core will ultimately be what you make of it. If you don't do the reading, it's your own fault for finding the classes boring. Then again if your instructor sucks, just grin and bear it, or beg the core office to change your section.

History

Pre-history

The idea of a seminar style class devoted to a weekly reading and discussion of the "Great Books" was first floated by english professor John Erskine in 1917. Erskine's request drew skepticism for a number of reasons, not the least because he also made the near-heretical call for reading the greek and roman classics in translation.

The beginning

In 1919 Columbia began a course titled "War Issues" in response to World War I, addressing contemporary thinking on a wide variety of subjects in the social sciences. Many of the texts were written by Columbia faculty members who also taught the classes. This was the beginning of the course that evolved into Contemporary Civilization. There was no Plato or Aristotle on the War Issues syllabus though.

Imitators

Columbia's Core Curriculum has often been imitated. In fact two of the most celebrated Core Curriculum's in the country, at the University of Chicago and St. John's College in Annapolis, were established by a Columbia graduate, Mortimer J. Adler who had been hired by each school for the explicit purpose of implementing a "Great Books" curriculum.

Further reading

• An Oasis of Order: The Core Curriculum at Columbia College (1995)
• List of Books on the Lit Hum Curriculum 1937-2000

External links

• Core Curriculum Website