The Meaning of Liberal Arts

By Arthur J. Monaco | Wednesday, June 12, 1996

Columbia University has long been a hotbed of student activism. It came as little surprise then, when students rallied together in protest this April. What was surprising was the nature of the protest — a number of the students spoke out against Columbia's Core Curriculum program. Traditionally this program has been one of the University's highlights, drawing high praise from students, faculty, and administrators alike. Stories about a hunger strike, and students chanting "Woof, woof, meow, meow, we want ethnic studies now!" and "Racist, sexist, anti-gay! NYPD go away!" were shocking. Luckily for the Core, the protesters were disjointed, and the Core escaped unscathed. But, perhaps inadvertently, they left some vital questions in their wake. Is the study of Western culture important enough to devote a Core Curriculum to it? Indeed, is Western culture important to study at all? Or can a student benefit more from
studying what he enjoys best?

We took the opportunity to pick up the discussion, and interviews provided an excellent discourse. Professors Mirollo, Balch, and Scott all spoke candidly, discussing the pros and cons of a Core Curriculum. Question that we tried to examine were, "Is it important for students to have a common educational foundation, in the form of a Core Curriculum?" "Since Western culture provides the complete body of thought on which our society is founded, should we not then study that culture?"

On the other side of the spectrum from Columbia, Brown University does not require a student to take a single specific course in order to graduate. Dartmouth falls somewhere in the middle. Rather than a Core, it utilizes a series of distributive requirements. These "distributives" fall in a wide range of categories. For example, a student must take one class in literature, one in art, etc. In their favor, distributive requirements give students the freedom to study topics they like best. But, the benefit is open ended. While the initiated student may seek out a wide range of solid, stimulating courses, other Dartmouth students can slip through the cracks. This paper assembled a theoretical four year course prospectus that had no time conflicts and fulfilled every distributive and graduation requirement. This prospectus used Spanish as a major, but any number of other majors could have been used in its stead.

The results of the experiment: a student utilizing this prospectus would not read a single classical Western text?— save Don Quixote — and could graduate without having taken a single course with a strong history of scholarship behind it.

This raises two questions. First, are students really taking advantage of the distributive system? The answer seems to yes. While no student is probably following the exact prospectus of courses constructed by this paper, enrollment numbers show that students are taking these non-traditional and often pseudo-academic courses with the same or greater frequency as some of our most traditional — like Homer in translation.

A greater question, then. What is behind a Dartmouth degree? While we never asserted that students at Dartmouth were completely ignoring the Western Canon, our intent was to show that it is indeed possible.

We then tested the average Dartmouth student's knowledge of Western culture. To ensure that the test was unbiased, we instructed our volunteers not to mention The Dartmouth Review in any way. The test contained various questions of historical significance paired with similar questions on popular culture.

Students failed this test miserably. For example, while only 35.3% of the 361 students surveyed could name three of the twelve apostles, 85.8% could name three of the four Beatles. And the list goes on.

As conclusion, we then looked at some of the best classes Dartmouth has to offer: "Introduction to the History of Art," "Shakespeare," "Chaucer," "Dante," "Milton," "The Bible," and "Epics, Comedy, and Tragedy in Greece and Rome." Again, we never claimed that everyone had to take these classics. Failure to take them does not make you uneducated. Nor did we assert that no one should study more "practical" fields, such as chemistry or computer science.

The discussion over the Western Canon is vital. As fewer and fewer students study the humanities, and more and more go into the sciences, is it important to have a foundation in Western culture? Or, is it important to study what interests you?

Academics have shown their willingness to contribute to this discussion. Reactionaries on both sides of the issue have shown their willingness to resort to name-calling and strong-arm tactics. As a paper, we only hoped to bring a discussion to light. Since our publication, many Dartmouth students, through other media, have brought their own opinions about this subject to the fore. In this we could say our hopes were met.

The Meaning of Liberal Arts

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