April 22, 2010

Kimberly Reeves

Interim charge #8 to House Higher Ed Committee:  8. Study the feasibility of offering an optional curriculum that emphasizes ethics, Western civilization, and American traditions to satisfy portions of the Texas Core Curriculum.

A House committee’s discussion of the foundations of Western Civilization and ethics in undergraduate degrees earlier this week sounded a lot like the more civilized and certainly less rancorous version of the State Board of Education’s debate over social studies.

That’s not to say that the road to Western Civilization in higher education has been without peril – witness the issues surrounding efforts to create a major at the University of Texas – but Chair Dan Branch’s approach to an interim charge on Western civilization was solution based and without the partisanship that has marred K-12 efforts.

On a purely academic level, the study of Western civilization, ethics and American traditions is the foundation of the classical liberal arts education, Lorraine Pangle of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas told the House Higher Education Committee. The intention is to give students a foundation in great ideas and great books so that students can answer life’s larger questions.

But what yesterday’s testimony seemed to indicate was that the current 42-hour core curriculum – every undergraduate student completes it before declaring a college major  – is currently such a hodge podge of unsequenced and unrelated options that students often fail to grasp larger concepts. History courses are six hours of US history and six hours of US government with humanities often filled by an English class.

“If we’re graduating students without that liberal arts education, or what is the essence of liberal arts education, then that’s something that maybe we need to take heed of and make more inquiries into the qualitative side of higher education in Texas,” Branch said.

Commissioner Raymund Paredes was not eager to put additional requirements on the common core, but he was open to a review of the current common core requirements. Literally hundreds of courses that cover aspects of Western civilization, ethics and American traditions already are being offered in Texas universities. And, still, about 80 percent of undergraduates tend to focus on the same 50 or so courses.

Paredes speculated problems around Western civilization could be centered on two peripheral issues: a lack of strong and accessible advising to direct students to the proper courses and a lack of a coherent relationship between and among courses. Professors sometimes fail to point out the relationship and development of thoughts and ideas between the scope of courses, Paredes said.

“The recurrent criticism is that the core curriculum is too broad and not deep enough,” Paredes said. “It’s difficult to consider ethics, Western civilization and American traditions and try to create an optional curriculum at the lower-division level that wouldn’t be extremely broad and superficial.”

The Thomas Jefferson Center attempts to work within the current lower-division common core, providing a six-course sequence for a certificate primarily with lower-division classes, Pangle said. The four required courses are ones on ancient Greece, basic religious texts old and new, the history of political philosophy and one on the American constitutional principles, plus two courses on great books.

The demands of college majors, however, often suck the air of any possible options, Pangle said. Pangle suggested more flexibility in humanities options in the common core, plus a possible grant program to encourage universities to develop their own course options. Those options will make more sense if they develop with faculty buy-in rather than a mandate from state leaders, Pangle said.

Nor are universities particularly geared to support liberal arts endeavors, Pangle said. Competitive universities are ranked on cutting-edge research, not civic education.  And, beyond that, many majors often are more prescriptive than the humanities, Pangle said.

“I think there is a lot more confusion with the humanities,” Pangle said. “We all know what goes into a medical education. If you’re going to look at hard questions, big questions, it’s much more difficult to prescribe what that curriculum should be. The civic education of future leaders is not the focus of most people in a major university.”

Vice Chair Joaquin Castro said he was much more indecisive about dictating curriculum in higher education than he would for K-12. Schoolchildren are minors. Those entering colleges and universities are adults.

“We give adults more freedom of choice because we expect them to have the wherewithal to make those choices and decisions,” Castro said. “I do agree it’s a worthwhile discussion.”