This essay argues that emphasizing "college and career-readiness" as the major goal of public education is too narrow a purpose for education. College and career readiness, if pursued exclusively, may deprive students of the problem-solving skills they need to live well-adjusted, flourishing lives. The purposes of education that were…

Core curricula are designed, in part, to help undergraduate students become intellectually well-rounded. To merge core curricula with the components of the scholarship of teaching and learning movement, students engaged in core curricula need capstone courses designed to aid them in retaining information over the long term and synthesizing…

If higher education is to have a coherent curriculum and a coherent way of thinking about the world, it may need to study premodern ways of thinking for both insights and the courage to think in new ways. The tradition of the humanities, which originated in fifteenth-century Italy, can help. (MSE)

This article argues that the sciences and the humanities are experiencing a growing mutual isolation and polarization in the college curriculum, and that an integration of the two is needed. Arts and humanities course developers are urged to incorporate elements of science instruction, including the scientific method, history and philosophy of…

A 2-year seminar (jointly funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Pew Charitable Trusts) explored ways faculty at La Salle University in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) might integrate the emphasis on self-awareness as well as the historical, political, and ethical insight common in humanities courses with courses in other…

Argues for a holistic core that balances the dialectic tensions between social science and humanities, scholarly discipline and craft/praxis, and common and special topics within the discipline. Offers rationales for two other unique features of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington curriculum: research methods at the front end of the…

This paper describes a new core curriculum at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a state supported black liberal arts college which emphasizes leadership and community service. The new core, "Critical Foundations in the Arts and Sciences" (CFAS), provides more interdisciplinary courses, and facilitates subsequent interdisciplinary…

This set of reports contains materials related to a 3-year project to develop, implement, assess, and disseminate three interdisciplinary courses in the humanities and social sciences that were designed especially for adult baccalaureate students at the New School for Social Research. Included in the first report are a project summary, executive…