{"id":1929868,"date":"2023-05-12T13:56:40","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T17:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/college-curricula-should-cultivate-core-values-not-shallow-diversity\/"},"modified":"2023-05-12T14:03:22","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T18:03:22","slug":"college-curricula-should-cultivate-core-values-not-shallow-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/college-curricula-should-cultivate-core-values-not-shallow-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"College should prioritize core values over superficial diversity in their curricula."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcollege-curricula-should-cultivate-core-values-not-shallow-diversity%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1929868&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Reviving the Core Curriculum: A Matter of Student Health<\/h2>\n<h3>Last week, interim President Richard Corcoran of New College of Florida, where I am a trustee, released an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/texas-resists-woke-calls-to-cancel-the-eyes-of-texas-band-members-must-play-it-or-join-different-band\/\" title=\"Texas Resists Woke Calls To Cancel \u2018The Eyes Of Texas\u2019: Band Members Must Play It Or Join Different Band\">executive summary<\/a> of a new core curriculum at the school. It\u2019s a proposal in an early stage, but the first principle of a solid core is stated explicitly numerous times.<\/h3>\n<p>The summary doesn\u2019t lay out particular courses that will make up the New College core, as reform began only a few <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/despite-insistence-by-democrat-politicians-and-medical-elites-empirical-evidence-does-not-conclusively-show-that-masks-reduce-the-spread-of-covid\/\" title=\"Despite Insistence by Democrat Politicians and Medical Elites, Empirical Evidence DOES NOT Conclusively Show that Masks Reduce the Spread of COVID\">months ago<\/a>. But \u201cWhatever the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/equal-pay-day-2021-where-do-women-actually-stand\/\" title=\"Equal Pay Day 2021: Where Do Women Actually Stand?\">choices made<\/a>,\u201d Corcoran writes, \u201cthe program should be uniform.\u201d Every student will pass through it, and everyone will read a set list of works (Plato,\u00a0The Federalist Papers, and\u00a0Tao Te Ching\u00a0are mentioned). The sequence may run to a dozen courses divided into the two categories of \u201cTechn\u00e9\u201d (science, technology, engineering, and math) and \u201cVirtue\u201d (humanities), not just the one or two Great Books courses that many schools including Harvard allow a few interested kids to choose.<\/p>\n<p>This \u201ccentral, common, intellectual experience\u201d will \u201ccreate a community,\u201d Corcoran predicts, and not just within each respective cohort that passes through. Alterations from year to year will be rare. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Progressivist educators insist that as the world changes the curriculum must change. They love innovation and the cutting edge. That desire won\u2019t fly in Sarasota.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe Virtue curriculum will be stable over time. Alumni children would read the same books which their parents read 25 years ago. The curriculum binds the NCF family across the generations,\u201d Corcoran writes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This fundamental commitment to sameness, commonness, and stability stands in forthright opposition to the customary blather about diversity, cultural relevance, social change, student choice, and other frameworks of \u201cprogress.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Throwing out the Old<\/h3>\n<p>Let\u2019s understand this as a matter of student health. First among the many educational crimes done to young Americans of the past two generations is the withholding of a coherent and elevated sense of the past. It started back in the previous century, when notions of diversity and multiculturalism broke up the old syllabus of Western civilization \u2014 English literature from Geoffrey Chaucer to James Joyce, the Enlightenment breakthrough, the Great American Novel, and other big-picture models \u2014 treating those noble lineages as exclusionary and unrepresentative.<\/p>\n<p>Such inspiring traditions ended in a blaze of curricular reforms that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/college-curricula-should-cultivate-core-values-not-shallow-diversity\/\" title=\"College should prioritize core values over superficial diversity in their curricula.\">downgraded dead-white-male stuff<\/a> and emphasized select thinking skills (no more required U.S. history, for example, just any course that instilled \u201chistorical thinking\u201d in some fashion). Educators cast the turn as overdue progress, an escape from the blinkered certitudes of Eurocentric agents.<\/p>\n<p>They didn\u2019t put anything in its place though \u2014 certainly not a rival big picture. Instead we have in the humanities a general education offering a little of this and a little of that, a Chinese menu of courses collected under abstractions such as Harvard\u2019s \u201cAesthetics &#038; Culture,\u201d \u201cEthics &#038; Civics,\u201d \u201cHistories, Societies, Individuals,\u201d and \u201cScience &#038; Technology in Society.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Each section contains multiple choices that students can take that semester to meet the requirement. Under the first topic, we have \u201cAmerican Dreams Made in Hollywood and Beyond,\u201d \u201cAnime as Global Popular Culture,\u201d \u201cBlack Radicalism,\u201d \u201cLGBT Literature, Politics, and Identity,\u201d and many more narrow and unrelated courses.<\/li>\n<li>No common material, no common experience, nothing that every student is supposed to study, or that is affirmed as so essential to an educated person that it cannot be avoided.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The broad message is clear: The past is a jumble. Students in Cambridge and a thousand other places draw the obvious conclusion that the centuries that preceded them have no purposive meaning, no momentum.<\/p>\n<h3>No Shared, Eternal Truths<\/h3>\n<p>To be educated in this way is to grow old in a wavering, superficial habitat. Religious observance might fix it, but most millennials and Generation Z-ers don\u2019t attend services. No transcendent orientation for them, no eternal beings or truths. They live in the present alone, here and now, isolated in their own experience. The formation, scattered and casual, reinforces their solitude.<\/p>\n<p>The meaning of their lives shrinks to the grooves of achievement and self-gratification. No wonder 71 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds believe most people \u201cwould try to take advantage of you if they got the chance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A fixed, coherent, superior core is one way to supply them with what has been lost. We need it not just at New College, but at every <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/liberal-prof-cries-over-lack-of-mask-mandate-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-personal-choice-in-a-pandemic\/\" title=\"Liberal Prof Cries Over Lack Of Mask Mandate: \u2018There Is No Such Thing As A Personal Choice In A Pandemic\u2019\">liberal arts school<\/a> in America.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mark Bauerlein is emeritus professor at Emory University and an editor at First Things magazine.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, interim President Richard Corcoran of New College of Florida, where I am a trustee, released an executive summary of a new core curriculum at the school. It\u2019s a proposal in an early stage, but the first principle of a solid core is stated explicitly numerous times. The summary doesn\u2019t lay out particular courses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1221,"featured_media":1929869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[4023,8404,4631,6759,10276,26621,16969],"class_list":["post-1929868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-college","tag-core","tag-curricula","tag-diversity","tag-prioritize","tag-superficial","tag-values"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1929868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1929869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1929868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1929868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1929868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}