The Rise and Fall of Western Civilization

Mike Gole

Humn 220

Dr. Akman

January 23, 2013

1. What is the reasoning behind a homogenous general education course for freshmen and sophomores?

The article spends a lot of time discussing the benefits of a compulsory general education course. But what is the objective of this course? In the article, the author uses a pyramid as an analogy for the history programs of many institutions, describing the programs as a “pyramid without a base.”  He claims that the programs focused too heavily on the more advanced history courses, and tend to ignore the fact that some students may be starting at a different point in their education than others. The purpose of a general education course was to make uniform the starting point for all students.  With the outbreak of World War I, the purpose of this type of course was altered. At Columbia, the “War Issues” general education course served two purposes. To some degree, the course served as a liberal arts course, attempting to help students understand the current foreign issues faced by the United States.  While doing this, the course became something that could also be considered as propaganda.  Nonetheless, the success of the course was crucial in the creation of future general education courses.

2. Why are American institutions so fixated upon European history?

The article discusses the fact that American institutions focus heavily on European history in their general education courses. This is partially due to the belief by American historians that “civilization” began in ancient societies such as Greece and Rome, and extended in to medieval history. This is also likely due to the fact that high schools taught a fairly narrow view of history; ancient, European, English and American only. The last factor of this particular bias comes from World War I. Because of the interactions between America and Europe during the war, American history programs became even more biased towards Europe over the rest of the world.

3. Should a general education course be mandatory for all students, or should those who wish to focus on their specialization be exempt?

Many times throughout the article, the concept of specialized education and general education is discussed.  While this question extends beyond history departments, initially, general education programs arose from the intense specialization of the history departments of many institutions. As stated above, general education was an attempt to provide all students a level point from which to start. However, the ideology behind general education courses is more complicated than that. The hope was also that general education courses would provide all students with the ability to form “a democratic community, [in which] citizens [are] educated as undergraduates in shared values that made possible an enlightened public consensus” (pg. 698). This statement provides a powerful argument against what became called the “curricular do as you please” movement of the 1960’s, which highly favored specialization. While it may not hold true for all students or all disciplines, it makes sense in my mind that all students take a general education course such as Western Civilization for the above reason.