Word: coreness
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...Coping with the gulf between Iranian private and public life is an intricate skill that even adults here manage with varying degrees of success. Wearing masks or lying when required, all while keeping your core identity intact, is the daily business of adults who live in authoritarian societies. But how on earth do you teach children these skills? Is it possible, even, to raise an open-minded, healthy child in a culture that is fundamentalist and anarchic? That I have plenty of tolerant, sane friends who grew up here is proof that this can be done...
Though the philosophy of the new general education is no doubt important, constructing a better system to ensure the integrity of the individual requirements and courses is perhaps even more vital to its long-term viability. A lack of strong oversight has allowed the current Core to decompose from a tight system guided by a clear rationale into the hodgepodge of specialty courses that it is today. Much of the blame goes to the CSC, which meets infrequently and prioritizes methods of student evaluation over course content when deciding which courses count for Core credit. For instance, the CSC insists...
Under the current Core, a non-departmental designation indicates that the Core office, rather than a department, may administer the course and (with rare exception) that the material is accessible to all students, regardless of their prior background. But to the experienced student, it usually also implies an easy course on an obscure topic with questionable lectures and quasi-competent teaching fellows...
...should also be more active in soliciting student and faculty input on which existing courses might satisfy a general education requirement. The current system usually requires a professor to submit an application to the CSC, which places too high of a burden on professors and leads to too few Core classes. The new committee should seek out potential general education courses, rather than the reverse...
...more active committee,” however, is a platitude unless the committee changes in two specific ways. First, it must meet more frequently. This will help to prevent the situation the CSC found itself in this September, when it could not certify the Core status of four new Humanities courses until the Committee’s first meeting in October, leaving it to Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles and Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 to fastrack them into the Core. Second, committee members must conduct unannounced audits of classes that have...