A coreless curriculum

At the beginning of this semester, members of the Imagining Duke Curriculum Committee released an initial draft of their proposed overhaul to the university’s general education requirements. Entitled “Experience Duke Deliberately,” it will allegedly allow students to “create coherent, self-authored pathways” so they can “think for themselves and work with others to engage the opportunities and challenges they and their communities will face.” With an array of people including North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory and Fox Business writer and management consultant Steve Tobak questioning the value of a traditional liberal arts education, it makes sense that the powers that be in the Allen Building want to eliminate the alphabet soup of CZs, CCIs and NSs that currently constitutes our curriculum. Its proposed replacement to Curriculum 2000 is a weak broth, however; while some of its components merit praise and deserve implementation, most of it is disappointing at best.

Under the new curriculum, students would be required to take an interdisciplinary yearlong “Duke Experience” course and conclude their undergraduate career with a “mandatory scholarly experience.” Both of these ideas are commendable; a single course in which all first-year students are enrolled would give them an unprecedented degree of intellectual common ground. For instance, the website of Columbia University, an institution with a rigorous undergraduate core, claims its six mandatory classes and four sets of further requirements allow “all students [to encounter] the same texts and issues at the same time” and promote dialogue between all members of the student body, evidence that Duke administrators’ goals are both commonplace and achievable. Furthermore, undergraduate research allows upperclassmen to engage more deeply with their course of study and prepare for life after graduation. In short, I believe these two components of the Committee’s recommendations are well intentioned and worthy of further consideration.

On the other hand, the shift from requirements to “expectations” in the general curriculum all but ensures the death of intellectual exploration by the average student. After their four years here, future Dukies are expected to “communicate compellingly,” “understand other language, cultures and civilizations,” “understand different forms of scientific thought and practice,” “understand creative projects of the human imagination” and “evaluate, manage and interpret information.” In other words, a student could very well spend his or her entire four years at Duke without taking a single quantitative, humanities or foreign language course, a problematic reality. After all, isn’t the “liberal arts” education promised to us by the admissions office supposed to consist of all of those components, courses we know won’t directly apply to our future careers but are nonetheless necessary to better understand the world around us?

Some of the best classes I’ve taken at Duke would not have even made it into my ACES bookbag were it not for the current distribution requirements. “Art and Architecture of Berlin” first grabbed my attention not due to its promise of “an introduction to the visual arts of Germany from the 15th to the 20th century” but because it carries a coveted “CZ” curricular code. A graduate-level Documentary Studies class fulfilled my second “Arts, Literature and Performance” requirement, but it also changed the way I read and write works of journalism. My friends, too, have admitted to studying abroad only because it was an efficient way to fulfill their Trinity requirements and agree that some of the best classes they took outside their major would not have even crossed their mind had they not been mandated to take courses outside their primary area of study. The current curriculum, while difficult to explain to a first-year student and undeniably in need of a refresh, is nonetheless effective at fostering the intellectual exploration integral to a comprehensive university education.

Should the proposed curricular restructuring become reality, I imagine a campus even more fragmented than it is currently, with students specializing even further and avoiding classes outside their interests that would introduce them to people of different backgrounds, capabilities and passions. To prevent the center of the University’s academic life from collapsing and the aforementioned prophecy to become reality, I recommend Committee members reconsider their suggestions. Encouraging Dukies to explore the intellectual world beyond their primary concentrations should be the goal of curricular reform, but removing almost any obligation to actually do so all but guarantees students will not take such expectations to heart.

Tom Vosburgh is a Trinity senior and the Editorial Page Editor.