Suppose that you have dropped your son or daughter off at one of the campuses of the University of North Carolina system. You have plenty to worry about: housing, roommates, clothing, money, and so forth. It’s quite a load.
At the risk of further depressing you, there’s one more thing that you should be worrying about — the college curriculum. Every one of the campuses of the UNC system pays lips service to the idea of giving every student a strong, well-rounded general education in addition to his or her major, but most don’t really guarantee it. If you’re assuming that the school you have chosen will give your child a good educational foundation, you’d better take another look.
The traditional core curriculum that distinguished our higher education system in the past — required courses in literature, American history and government, science, college-level mathematics, and fundamental courses in the social sciences and fine arts — has been abandoned by most colleges and universities in the country. The UNC system is no different. Instead of a real core curriculum, most have adopted the “distribution requirements” approach, wherein students must take a course or two in each of several different academic fields. In the UNC system, only three schools still have a core curriculum of key courses that all students take: Elizabeth City State, North Carolina Central, and Winston-Salem State.
At the other UNC schools, students fulfill most of their general education requirements by choosing from lists (sometimes prodigious lists) of courses that qualify. The problem is that many of the courses are ill-suited to providing the student’s general education. Many are overly specialized; some are politically charged; others are just educational cotton candy. Giving students such a range of choice not only eliminates the possibility of their benefiting from a shared educational experience, but also means that many will graduate without ever having taken courses that are key to a well-rounded education.
Consider these examples.
Students attending Appalachian State have to take four humanities courses. This requirement could be fulfilled with some excellent and appropriate courses such as American Literature, Arts and Ideas, Introduction to Philosophy, and Logic. But it could just as well be filled with African-American Literature, Introduction to Film, Introduction to Women’s Studies, History of Rock Music, or Religions of Asia.
At UNC-Greensboro, students must complete two courses in social sciences. They could choose such worthwhile courses as Introduction to Economics, American Politics, and General Psychology — or they could fulfill the requirement with courses such as Sociocultural Analyses of Sport and Exercise, Human Sexuality, Personal Health, or Leisure and American Lifestyles.
North Carolina State spreads an array of courses before its students for each of its general education requirements. To satisfy the Humanities and Social Sciences requirement, for example, students have to take seven courses— from more than 200 possibilities. Some of the courses appear excellent: Introduction to Shakespeare, Western Civilization, and Practical Reasoning, to name just three. Many others, however, are hardly the stuff of general education, such as Introduction to History of West Africa, Postmodernism, The Buddhist Traditions, Religious Cults, Sects, and Minority Faiths in America, History of Film to 1940, Women in Music, Psychology of Gender, Race in U.S. Politics, France in the Old Regime and Sexuality and Values.
Finally, at Chapel Hill, students have a prodigious smorgasbord of course offerings to choose from in order to satisfy their general education requirements. Hundreds of courses are open to UNC students that count toward their requirements. Naturally, many are unobjectionable. But many others are too specialized, politicized, or academically dubious for general education credit. Some examples: Environmental Advocacy, Literature and Cultural Diversity, Introduction to Rock Music, Sex and Gender in Society, Hegel, Marx, and the Philosophical Critique of Society, and Social and Economic Justice.
How much different things are at some of the smaller campuses. At Elizabeth City State University, for instance, most of the general education curriculum is set out for the student, consisting of nothing but fundamental courses.
One of the hallmarks of modern intellectualdom is its refusal to say that anything is more important than anything else. American History or History of West Africa? Logic or Leisure and American Lifestyles? Just let the student decide.
Since administrators won’t make such judgments, parents should. They need to step in and strongly encourage the student to take courses that will add up to a good, fundamental education.