Word: core
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Rosovsky counters, however, that making Core proposals public may endanger reputations. Confidentiality, he says, protects professors whose course suggestions the committee rejects. This attitude appears overly protective. As Berman said of his experience on the committee: "If there is one thing I have learned in the past year-and-a-half it's that above all Faculty members hate to be embarrassed. You've got to indulge them so they don't back out and just not offer the Core course...
...committee approved earlier this month. Berman explained, "Rosovsky thought it might look like we liked those courses better and the other professors might get offended." It begins to sound as though the committee is coddling sulking preschoolers, not working with distinguished adult scholars. The committee should place the Core's welfare--secured by encouraging broad discussion--above professors' tender egos...
...student body should clearly have a voice in this discussion. Many Core courses are based on existing introductory departmental and General Education courses. Students who took these courses--and almost all have large enrollments--can offer valuable suggestions as to how the Faculty might strengthen the classes. Such advice could ensure that the Core program avoids the floundering and lack of direction that plagued Gen Ed, its ill-fated predecessor...
Rosovsky's final line of justification then for discouraging student involvement--that the Core will not affect students now enrolled--also proves illogical. This same argument might be applied to the Faculty with equal validity. Professors who will retire next year, assistant professors who will not receive tenure and professors who don't plan to teach Core courses are also unaffected by the Core. Should Rosovsky have barned them from the Faculty debates on the Core Curriculum last year...
...then to involve students? Rosovsky points out that students can't reasonably expect the committee to put the proposed slate of courses up for a referendum at this late date. Once the Core committees have selected their courses they are unlikely to alter willingly their choices in response to students' objections. But Rosovsky fails to acknowledge that students should have participated when the committees began drafting and debating possible courses earlier in the year...