This article is meant to be an extended addendum to what John Stevenson '05 said in his piece ("The Critical Examination," June 28). I would like to thank him for citing my previous article; I now return the favor by attempting to add to the multiculturalism debate that he calls for.
Proponents of multi-culturalism have called upon liberal education to diversify itself in the face of changes to America's ethnic/racial composition. Hence at Dartmouth, over the past few years, we have seen the expansion of programs in ethnic, gender and cultural studies. Recently, the faculty voted to expand our system of distributive requirements to include one on Race, Ethnicity and Immigration. The intentions behind these recent developments are, I think, essentially noble. Americans can no longer afford to be ignorant of the ways in which gender, race, class and identity structure not just their own society, but also the world in general.
My concern, however, is that we are emphasizing and celebrating diversity at the risk of losing what is more important to us: a common humanity. Diversity can quickly degenerate into separatism if left unchecked by sweet reason. One of the more perceptive comments made by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind was that college education today is becoming increasingly fragmented and trivial. Students as a result have no idea of the big picture -- of how, for instance, a literature class on Shakespeare relates to a philosophy class on Plato. I think Dartmouth students can empathize with Professor Bloom's observation. Most of us choose our classes every term without thinking very much about how they relate to each other or to what we have taken previously. There is very little we can do about this, unfortunately. Major requirements aside, our current system of distributive requirements is lacking in that it does not provide us with the foundational knowledge upon which liberal learning springs. For instance, how many times did you wish you knew the Bible classical mythology better because the poetry you were reading contained innumerable Biblical references?
What I am advocating, therefore, is a core curriculum in the humanities, ala. Columbia, the University of Chicago and St. John's College. This curriculum will take a "Great Books" approach and be grounded largely in the study of Western civilization. At the same time it will take into account the achievements of non-Western cultures and questions of race, ethnicity, gender and class. Thus a student might read Genesis, Plato, Dante and Shakespeare alongside the Analects of Confucius, selections from the Koran, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas. Such a curriculum, which will stretch throughout freshman year, will replace English 5, the Humanities I-II sequence and the Freshman Seminar. It will aim to show, chiefly, how Western civilization -- the pre-eminent civilization today -- has developed into what it is today. It will explore diversity within a common framework and would act as a countermeasure to some of the more esoteric and heavily politicized offerings available elsewhere in the curriculum. Naturally, it would be taught by many of Dartmouth's best professors in a seminar format. As E.M. Forster wrote in Howards End, "Only connect!"
Let me address some of the more familiar complaints against a core curriculum. Some students would argue that we should be allowed to take what we want and not have such "hegemonic paradigms" imposed upon us. They say that the Western Canon is racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist, etc. Isn't the system of distributive requirements a Golden Mean between the rigidity of Columbia and the amorphousness of Brown?
But we do have choices; the core isbut a small fraction of our total number of classes at Dartmouth. As for the complaint that a core would impose some form of authority upon us, I respond with the question, do we necessarily know what it means to be liberally educated? We could take those classes that suit our fancy, and end up knowing a lot about gender oppression in rural Tanzania but very little about Shakespeare, who, according to Harold Bloom, invented the human, Plato ("All philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato" -- Whitehead) or Islam. How many of us, before we entered Dartmouth, thought that all it meant was being able to think critically and write well? Well, thinking and writing flourish to a far greater degree when they are combined with what Matthew Arnold called "the best that is known and thought in the world." The Great Books do not constrain us, because they are not homogenous; they are intellectually diverse.
I know I am engaging in wishful thinking. A core curriculum may very well soon become obsolete in the face of thoughtless multiculturalism. But if anything, advancing an argument for it might have an effect on some people. C'mon, Dartmouth, let's talk.
