It is time to shelve the New Curriculum, at least for a while. Today I passed an impassioned tour guide who longingly, lovingly, yearningly explained the benefits of the New Curriculum. He pleaded that each Brown student wants to be here, that we're not just here because we want to fulfill some requirements. Enough of that. Have you ever heard of organic chemistry? How about the large introductory courses you might have to take for your degree? How about courses that you have to take to fulfill some obscure requirement within your concentration? Such is the false promise of the New Curriculum.
In its final report on the New Curriculum, the Task Force for Undergraduate Education states that incoming students "share a responsibility for arranging their own core programs." The idea that we are supposed to shape our own core program sounds amazing. However, I was under the impression that we are supposed to choose courses that sound interesting until we stumble upon something in which we could possibly concentrate. At Brown, we are supposed to be free from anything remotely similar to a "core program." Creating such a program would require serious advising — someone sitting down with each student, discussing and suggesting possible interests, and then creating a core curriculum outside of whatever concentration he or she might choose. Of course, this is also impossible: How can you create a curriculum for a student if they don't know in what they want to concentrate?
Many of us think that we wouldn't like to be told what to do. But when a university has a core curriculum, these classes are sure to be of good quality because the administrators know that most students are taking them. In creating one's own core, some classes are going to be hits and others are going to be misses.
Furthermore, the demographics of the University have changed since the New Curriculum was instated. Today we have more international students, first-generation college students and minority students. For many of these students, the stakes seem higher when they are choosing classes, and it is harder for them to willingly experiment — hence they would benefit from a core, or at least distribution requirements. Give me a solid education, and I will give you my money. I don't want to engage in a gamble, especially since it is my dad, not me, who is footing the bill.
Some will stand on the other side of the chasm and tell me that, from these tough decisions about courses, they learned that it's okay to fail, or that these decisions help one to learn how to fail. Well, try putting that in the Brown catalogs — "We set our students up for failure so that they can learn how to fail."
What's the big deal if we are given some loose requirements? It makes a lot more sense than handing freshmen a list of 3,000 courses and telling them to choose four. What is wrong with some professors and administrators (who are wiser than me) sitting down and putting some thought into what I should know in order to graduate? Distribution requirements, such as those at Harvard, require students to take eight courses in various categories, such as "Culture and Belief" and "U.S. in the World." Meanwhile, at other schools, students are simply required to take a breadth of courses in many disciplines. At universities such as IU Bloomington, the requirements fall under traditional disciplines such as "Arts and Humanities" or "Social and Historical Studies." The intentions behind these distribution requirements and the New Curriculum dovetail because both aim for students to have a well-rounded, coherent liberal arts education.
In short, I'm not satisfied with the education I have gotten thus far. My individual classes have been for the most part excellent, but there is a lack of cohesion among the classes outside my major. I have been the architect of a shoddy house that I wouldn't want to live in. Having so little experience before this construction, it's no wonder that my house is shaky. No one taught me what to use for foundations, or as pillars. Freshman orientation might be better spent on a seminar teaching new students how to be the architects of their education. Teach us what can make up the basement, and what should only serve as the roof. Maybe some history for the foundations, and literature for the roof, with some economics in the pillars. This is a possibility if the University and its students insist on maintaining the new curriculum — after all, what else would distinguish us from Harvard?
In the absence of such an effort, it may be time to end this "experiment" and get back to the serious task of sending rigorously educated students out into the world.
Nida Abdulla '11.5 is an English concentrator from New Jersey. She may be contacted at nida_abdulla@brown.edu.
