Back in the 1960s, a popular phrase in the youth counterculture was “Do Your Own Thing!” That is, don’t feel bound by rules and conventions—just do what you feel like. All those moldy old rules just suppress individuality and creativity, so forget about them.
There isn’t much evidence of the 60s counterculture any more, but we still see the “Do Your Own Thing” mentality in the general education curricula at many colleges and universities. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, since many of the protesters of the 60s are now ensconced in the world of higher education, “tenured radicals” as Roger Kimball calls them.
Many colleges and universities used to have a rather strict core curriculum that aimed at ensuring a broad educational foundation for all students. The “Do Your Own Thing” philosophy has eroded that curriculum at a lot of them and washed it away completely at others. That is why the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) recently established a new site committed to informing students, parents, and any other interested parties about the state of general education at many schools.
The name of ACTA’s project is self-explanatory: What Will They Learn? Will students receive a solid, broad educational foundation—or does the school allow them to wander through a smorgasbord of courses, picking whatever looks appealing?
Former Harvard dean Harry Lewis explains on the site why people should care whether a school as a good general education program or not: “At its best, general education is about the unity of knowledge, not about distributed knowledge. Not about spreading courses around, but making connections between different ideas.”
So just what do the folks at ACTA think makes for a good general education program? Students need to take basic courses in seven subject areas: English composition, literature, a foreign language, American government or history, economics, mathematics, and natural or physical science. They are all important.
Composition. Most young Americans leave high school with writing skills that are poor. Those old-line English teachers who used to work slavishly to ensure that students could write a clear, coherent essay are a vanishing breed. They have been replaced with “do you own thing” types who pat students on the head and give them high grades for sloppy, incomprehensible work. Colleges must have a hard-nosed composition requirement.
Unfortunately, just having a required composition course doesn’t guarantee that it will be taught well, as Nan Miller showed in this Pope Center paper. Not infrequently, instructors use the freshman composition course as an excuse to harp on their social and political manias rather than to teach good writing. So while I agree that colleges need to have a required composition course, it’s just a necessary condition. If it isn’t a good composition course, it’s a waste of time.
That comment applies, naturally, not just to composition but to all of the courses that should be required.
ACTA doesn’t try to evaluate any of the courses, which would be an almost impossible task given that two different courses (even sections taught by different faculty) at the same school could be as different as night and day.
Literature. Well-educated people should have some grasp of great literature. What ACTA has in mind is a comprehensive survey course covering major authors, not a narrow or trendy course focusing on authors chosen for ideological reasons.
Foreign Language. Students should learn a foreign language at least to the level of intermediate competence. Most schools used to have a serious language requirement, but that has been gradually disappearing.
U.S. Government or History. Many students enter college with pathetically little knowledge about our history and governmental institutions, and unfortunately they often graduate without having learned much, as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s civic literacy surveys have shown. Schools only get a check from ACTA on this if they require a broad course, rather than any number of niche ones.
Ideally, schools would insist on courses in both American history and government.
Economics. Ignorance of the fundamentals of economics is a handicap in making sense of the world. The well-educated individual needs to understand the role of prices, incentives, trade, money, and much more. That calls for at least one course on the principles of economics.
Mathematics. Math-phobia is rampant in America and many schools have allowed their math requirements to slide, or have even dropped them entirely. ACTA wants to see students take a college-level course such as advanced algebra, trigonometry, statistics or calculus. Remedial courses or those like “computer literacy” where the math content is low don’t count.
Natural or physical science. Comprehending the scientific method and some field such as astronomy, biology, chemistry, or physics should be part of a college education. Quite a few schools have a science requirement but allow students to fulfill it with popular courses taught by faculty outside of science departments and with little actual science content. As far as ACTA is concerned, such courses don’t count.
I’ll mention one omission that I think is serious—logic. Few schools require a logic course; the only one I know about is the University of Detroit-Mercy, whose core curriculum leaves no student behind when it comes to the capacity to reason and detect fallacies. The United States would be far better off if our leaders could employ logic, or thought that a significant number of voters would, anyway. (I would be glad to know about other schools that require logic, if there are any.)
And now we get back to the title of this article. ACTA has graded a substantial number of colleges and universities on how well their general education requirements do. To get an “A” a school had to meet at least six of the seven core subjects; to get a “B,” four or five; to get a “C,” three; a “D,” two; schools with only one or none flunked.
Of the 100 schools ACTA examined, only five got an A: the University of Arkansas, the University of Texas, Texas A&M, the U.S. Military Academy (i.e., West Point) and Brooklyn College. Each had six of the seven.
Thirty-three schools received B grades, including the University of Chicago, Duke, Columbia, Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina, and Ohio State.
Twenty schools received C grades, including Princeton, Stanford, and UCLA.
Seventeen schools received D grades, including Harvard, and the University of Virginia.
Finally, pulling the average way down, were twenty-five Fs, including Yale, Berkeley, Brown, Amherst, Rice, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern.
One of the conclusions that leaps out from ACTA’s investigation is that it’s a mistake to think that the “elite” colleges and universities necessarily provide their students an elite education. A student at one of the Ivy League schools that fares badly in this report might wind up taking courses that provide the sort of solid, broad education that a good core curriculum gives—or he might coast along to his degree taking a hodge-podge of trendy, boutique courses. Conversely, students at some schools that are not especially prestigious are put through a good core and may well wind up with a superior education.
I hope that ACTA will expand on its work, adding many more schools. And whether they are included or not, college officials should be encouraged to see how their general education requirements stack up against the benchmark ACTA has set forth.