As history goes on people in the world today need to know more factual information about our past, but most importantly the past of the western civilizations. Many years ago college professors and institutions decided it was important for their students to know about what shaped their world that they lived in. But, as we all know, the world is changing everyday so the crucial parts of history change as well. These people decided to create a course for college undergraduates starting out as either freshman or sophomores to teach them the relevance of our history. They decided to do this through the western civilization course. The problem was to know what to put into this specific course. The culture, religion, politics, warfare, and key issues in philosophy and science that made today possible needed to be recognized. All the major philosophers and leaders needed to be known and discussed thoroughly from these western civilizations. What made them work? Why were they successful? and most importantly why did the people of today follow in their footsteps and use their ideas on government, military strategies, building construction, art, philosophy and culture?
These colleges fought over which class was the most influential and changed how it was being taught. At first they started out as huge lecture halls of students and realized this was not the best way for these students to retain this critical information. Studies were done showing that by having smaller class sizes students understood and remembered what was taught better. Class names were changed and tweaked as well in different ways based on the professors choosing. Eventually American students were learning more about the history of European cultures than the Europeans were at their own colleges and universities. This course was so vital to incoming students because of it combining all the critical points of our history and shaping an individuals knowledge of their past.
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