The Common Core (also core curriculum or the Core) is the University of Chicago's implementation of the Great Books program for its college. These courses cover topics in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, and sciences. It forms the general education requirements for the college and uses the Socratic method to teach critical analysis of original texts. The purpose of the Core is to provide a common intellectual experience for all undergraduate students regardless of their major. It is also associated with Chicago's highly academic culture and its reputation for rigor.
The Core was founded on the principles of educational perennialism by Chicago President Robert Hutchins and philosophy professor Mortimer Adler in the 1930s. It has been modified and expanded in order to address the accusation of deifying Dead White Men, but in essence it is still as it was originally intended: a broad introduction to the best thinkers of Western Civilization through original source material.
Famous quotes containing the words common and/or core:
“Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.”
—Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980)
“In the core of God’s abysm,—
Was a weed of self and schism;
And ever the Daemonic Love
Is the ancestor of wars,
And the parent of remorse.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)