Wednesday, May 15, 1996
Volume 16, Issue x

Canon Fodder

In the last issue of The Dartmouth Review (TDR 5/1/96), this paper examined the Core Curriculum program at Columbia University. Columbia's Core contains year-long freshman courses on philosophy and literature, and semester long courses on art and music. The principle behind Columbia's Core is to give students a common educational experience, and teach them the history and accomplishments of Western society.

Trends in General Education:An Interview with the President of the National Association of Scholars

Steven Balch, a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, has been President of the National Association of Scholars since 1987. The NAS is the nation's largest higher education reform group, made up of academics and located in Princeton, NJ. The NAS has just released their results from a four-year long study of historical trends in liberal arts curricula.

Dartmouth Without the Core: A Prospectus of Courses for a Dartmouth '98

The following is a course of study that fulfills all of Dartmouth's major and distributive requirements in four years. Courses are listed for each term, along with their times and the distributive requirement(s) which they fulfill. "Maj" indicates a course credited towards the major, which is Spanish in this hypothetical student's prospectus.

What Dartmouth Knows— And What It Doesn't

1. What famous brothers founded Rome?
Romulus and Remus (61.4%)
2. Name one lawyer from the "Scopes Monkey Trial."
Clarence Darrow or William Jennings Bryan (29.9%)

Finding Racism Where It's Not

Naturally I was aware that the term "environment" galvanized interest, and knew the term 'racism' was another hot-button issue that has come to have almost universal application. So the fusion of these two terms into 'environmental racism' seemed to me a stroke of genius.

Sour Notes for Dartmouth Teams

"The Indian baseball team's season ended on a heartbreaking note against Harvard the weekend of May 4 and 5 as they were swept by the Crimson in a four game series. Dartmouth won three of four games from Yale a week earlier to set up the series that would decide the Red Rolfe division champion."

Extolling the Presidents: Charles Gibson Reviews 'Character Above All'

Robert A. Wilson's Character Above All is a compilation of ten essays that attempt to relate the notion of character to the presidential leadership of the last ten presidents, excluding Mr. Clinton. Wilson has drawn upon the resources and researches of political columnists, biographers, and speech writers, to assemble what he calls his "act of defiance."

Letters to the Editor

"I think your news reporting of the situation here at Columbia as regards the Core Curriculum and the recent demonstrations was on the whole quite adequate. On the other hand, the editorializing, and indeed the sarcastic editorial itself, were less welcome, and in truth quite disturbing."