Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1998/11/17/literature_and_humanities_at_columbia.php
Tuesday, November 17, 1998
What class is required, forces you to read dozens of books by dead white guys, meets for several hours at a time, and is universally loved by all the students who take it? Well, it's sure as hell not English 5. A better bet would be Philosophy and Literature 1, Columbia College's required introduction to the core of the Western Canon.
In recent years, the debate over the Western Canon, the traditional literary hallmarks of Western Civilization, from Homer to Vergil to Dante to Milton, has raged at the elite East Coast colleges that all formerly offered and required it. Some have gone as far as Brown University, ridding themselves of all basic requirements, and others have gone the route of Columbia, pressing it upon students along with snippets from other societies and cultures.
The debate seems a straightforward one: should our studies center around the great works of our society, decidedly Western in origin, or from all societies, emphasizing the literature with which students are less likely to be familiar?
Even better, is a core set of knowledge really a plus in today's increasingly specialized society?
This is probably what Brown administrators were asking themselves when they scrapped their requirements about twenty years ago. Books considered canonical are old, irrelevant, ethnocentric, and boorish — why should our students have to conform to somebody else's ideal liberal arts education?
Around the same time Columbia, like many colleges, also revaluated its curriculum, but came up with an altogether different solution: a reaffirmation of its own traditional emphasis on the classics.
The facade of Columbia's main library even bears a prominently placed list of the great classical writers — from Aeschylus to Ovid. This knowledge, it was felt, would provide the base for any strong liberal arts education.
Many Brown students, it seems, run into problems after graduation. Without a reasonable base of knowledge or a strong major, many drift around for years before finding a lifelong interest or steady employment; this is certainly not the norm for the Ivy League elite.
According one educational advisor, 'Brown doesn't prepare students for life outside of college; too often, it turns them out happy but confused. In time, that happiness fades away.'
In other words, by pandering to their students short-term interests, Brown has knocked them off course from hitting their long-term goals.
On a recent trip to Columbia, I spoke with many students and faculty about their core program and was surprised to hear the same praises repeated again and again. Socially, the core is a big hit on campus, providing a common set of experience that students are at ease discussing, much like our own Dartmouth Outing Club trips.
'So, are you taking Philo 1,' is a simple and nonthreatening first line to strike a conversation with any Freshman on campus. According to one Freshman, 'You have it in common with 900 other students.' Students expect to use their knowledge of the classics extensively after college, at cocktail parties, with clients, to impress dates, and so on. Mastery of a set of knowledge this universal in our culture can open the door in many sticky situations, and Columbia students are poised to make the most of it.
On the day that I sat in on Philo 1, the class was discussing the Lysistrata, a Greek tragedy. The setting appeared to be that of any good college seminar; students seated in an arc about the professor's central desk, dog-eared and heavily-marked books in every hand.
The professor led the class in their discussion but led gently, allowing time for comments, questions, interjections, and arguments while prodding delicately to be sure that the play would be covered in full depth by the end of the period.
What seemed odd to me was the complete attention and total involvement of the students. Not only were all awake, each seemed to be brimming with ideas and topics of interest that they were eager to fit in before the bell. The students in the class managed to weave modern-day themes; for them, the canon is far from irrelevant.
The taboo nature of sexual relations in both our own culture and ancient Greece was discussed as was the evolution of this 'cultural baggage.' That topic spawned an aside into gender roles and the very nature of gender, itself.
Throughout, both the professor and the students were able to point out and interpret the many humorous references in the text; the Lysistrata is, above all, a humorous critique on Greek culture and a parody of traditional dramatic works.
According to class member Andrew Cheung '02, the core curriculum is 'supposed to teach you to think' while introducing the student to 'the basis of the society we live in.' Dave Boyuk '02, like the other Columbia students I spoke with, has a love/hate relationship with the core. 'Personally, the core busts your nuts, but I love it.'
While they enjoy complaining about the core, the time it takes out of their schedules, and the strain its homework places upon them, Columbia students don't hesitate to extol its virtues and benefits. Said Cheung, the core is 'the whole point of a liberal arts education.' The students in Philo 1 are not alone in their defense of the core; their professors, despite their political predilections, agree with the basic educational value of the core curriculum.
'Every September, incoming students have been told to read the first six books of The Iliad before they arrive,' says James Mirollo, Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia College.
'When they get here, they are all talking about The Iliad. That's the educational notion behind the whole Core. Students gain a common experience which they can talk about, and this creates a kind of intellectual excitement.'
Steven Balch, the President of the National Association of Scholars, takes a similar view of the education importance of the Core Curriculum. 'Discussion seems to take place,' he says, 'among people who seem to share some ideas and some interest, and some fund of knowledge. I would think a healthy mix of core curriculum and specialization would allow students to develop that base in common and then go on to develop their specialties.... I think there has to be more emphasis on the heart and soul of education, the liberal education.'
Have Brown and other schools that have followed its lead really shortchanged their students by dropping the Western canon? Many Columbia students believe that this is the case. In addition to their specializations, they share a broad-base core of knowledge that all but a few Brown students lack. This core, the basis of their society, is certainly not something that will ever hold them back. We should wish Brown graduates much luck; they're going to need it.