Last week, the Faculty Senate held their first winter session meeting. One of the policy highlights for winter term will be revisions to the baccalaureate core requirements — something most students would like to see. However, going into the year, the initial proposals seem to only focus on curriculum linguistics and clearer "student learning outcomes" of core classes. This should hardly be the expected change to the bacc-core requirements the majority of students hope to see.
The Baccalaureate Committee, which is part of the Faculty Senate, must initiate a much-needed discussion on the actual redundancy and legitimacy of our current complete set of bacc-core requirements over the next few meetings. With a chance to change something about bacc-core, let's not stop at wording of "course outcomes." Let's get some serious thoughts going on the actual purpose of bacc-core.
Mandatory exploration and, if you will, expansion of our personal interests was best left to high school years. Certainly, the majority of college students are still deciding what they wish to focus their education, and subsequent career on, but allow them to do so as they wish. Requiring students to enroll in a laboratory science or cultural diversity course, for example, stresses the variegated curriculum that many of us have already been through, and have already been introduced to.
Students don't choose to continue their education to be exposed and introduced to all ideas; they choose to continue for their own interests. This is not to say each one of us would become a short-sighted, single-skilled product of society. Instead, allowing a student to move through the great breadth of Oregon State University courses as they wish would only weed out those forever scrambling to succeed in their subject. Let students focus on their passion; don't force other (supposedly) important topics upon them.
American society could most certainly use a greater scientific literacy, a more basic understanding of Constitutional Law, and a greater acceptance of cultures both beyond and amongst us. But finding these characteristics within our current bacc-core requirements is arbitrary at best. There's no way to qualify the current expected outcomes of bacc-core classes.
To have a basic understanding of the geological processes of Earth? To compare the cultures of Southeastern Asia and the Asian Pacific? To be able to discuss the history of American social structure, from race and gender to income and occupation?
To say one course exposes the mind to a new ideal, could provide the very same argument in closing a mind to another; we often love what we understand, and hate what we don't.
The Difference, Power and Discrimination requirement should be seen as a great opportunity to expose students to the quiet injustices of our society. But who's to require that we need to be exposed to it, or in the least, who's to say what constitutes an injustice in diversity, in power or discrimination? Ironically, a course discussing one form of discrimination — in history, a region, a race — could push another form off the course catalog.
Nevertheless, imagine bacc-core courses do in fact better each individual student — both the focused and wandering mind — and consider the actual requirement, burden really, of requiring more classes outside of our desired area of interest.
Should a student, who excels in their business courses, on track to enter a graduate program in a year, complete with an internship in the prior summer — using an example of an extremely prepared student — be forced to fulfill a Biological and Physical Science requirement to graduate? Should a student who has had a passion for chemistry since the second grade come into college expecting to enroll in a Contemporary Global Issues, Literature and Arts and Western Culture course?
Are these vague, frivolous classifications of courses OSU's obligation to provide? Or what the guise of public education burdens OSU with? These students have already been through the exploration, "mind-sculpting" game; they have a high school diploma. Let them study their field.
Even worse, many of these categories include courses such as History of Rock'n'Roll, and Human Sexuality, which students often choose simply for a more acute interest. Did the bacc-core committee expect to equate Rock'n'Roll with anthropology, or sexuality with economics? Most likely not, but when classifying, these courses get muddled together, and students are then allowed to skip the actual fundamental reason initially behind our bacc-core system: exposure to new ideas. Sexuality and Rock'n'roll could be life-altering, but they are certainly not life-requiring.
Granted, requiring students to expose themselves to new ideas and concepts is (fundamentally) a commendable idea. However, between actually enrolling in courses that provide the student with a new perspective, not just a free pass to work on the GPA, and trying to measure the actual effects of the courses, bacc-core seems like a trivial attempt to keep the student body open-minded.
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