Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Ursinus’ freshman core

Jay Mathews has a very nice article in the Washington Post about Ursinus College’s "Common Intellectual Experience" or freshman core course. My old James Madison College acquaintance Paul Stern is prominently featured, as well he should be.

Ursinus’ course seems to have evolved in much the same way as the current version of Oglethorpe’s core curriculum did. I describe the development of Oglethorpe’s core in this paper.

Discussions - 2 Comments

It sounds very commendable - but, are we really at the point where such a brief introduction to the classics is really an innovative program? It frightens me to think of what is happening at other colleges.

I’m a little bit more of a "glass half full" guy; plus, the focus seemed to be on the early common experience, not just "the classics". Get ’em early, get ’em excited, I say. None of the foregoing is intended to paint a rosy picture of the contemporary academic scene, of course. But point to candles as well as curse the darkness.

Leave a Comment

* denotes a required field
 

No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: https://nlt.ashbrook.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/6589


Warning: include(/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2005/05/ursinus-freshman-core.php on line 439

Warning: include(): Failed opening '/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/opt/sp/php7.2/lib/php') in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2005/05/ursinus-freshman-core.php on line 439