Core Curriculum (Columbia College)

One section of the Contemporary Civilization Source Book in the early 1940s. There were two parts containing ten sections each. This copy shows it in use at Yale University in addition to Columbia.

The Core Curriculum was originally developed as the main curriculum used by Columbia College of Columbia University in 1919. Created in the wake of World War I, it became the framework for many similar educational models throughout the United States, and has played an influential role in the incorporation of the concept of Western civilization into the American college curriculum.[1][2] Today, customized versions of the Core Curriculum are also completed by students in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of General Studies, the other two undergraduate colleges of Columbia University.

Later in its history, especially in the 1990s, it became a heavily contested form of learning, seen by some as an appropriate foundation of a liberal arts education, and by others as a tool of promoting a Eurocentric or Anglocentric society by solely focusing on the works of "dead white men".[3] Largely driven by student protests, the Core in recent decades has been revised to add focus on non-Western cultures, as well as postcolonial works to the literature and philosophy sequences. The most recent major addition to the Core was made in the 2000s with the addition of "Frontiers of Science", a scientific literacy course, to the curriculum.

  1. ^ Thomas J. Lasley, II; Thomas C. Hunt; C. Daniel Raisch (2010). Encyclopedia of Educational Reform and Dissent. SAGE Publications. p. 401. ISBN 978-1-4129-5664-2.
  2. ^ Cross, Timothy P. (1995). An Oasis of Order: The Core Curriculum at Columbia College. Columbia University, Columbia College. ISBN 978-0-9649084-0-6.
  3. ^ William Theodore De Bary (2007). Confucian tradition and global education. Columbia University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-231-14120-8.