Quote Originally Posted by UTEopia View Post
LA, You probably ran with a different crowd than I did, but the students I interacted with in college and law school from 75-85, were pretty uninterested in education and general learning and more interested in the game of doing well in school. I would say that I fell into that category as well. I spent my first quarter at the U mostly interested in parties and girls, did a semester abroad in Israel through BYU (sort of an outpatient drug re-hab), did a mission (loved Spain), returned to BYU for a semester (too many rules), got married and finished at the U, went to law school at University of San Diego for a year and then finished at BYU (most boring people I ever met). The move from USD to BYU was financially motivated. While painting with very broad strokes, the most interesting and well-read group of students I interacted with were at USD. Unlike most of the people I interacted with at the U and BYU, they were more interested in the experience than the job at the end of the rainbow. Maybe the fact that there was a greater diversity of background and ideology gave rise to more robust and interesting discussions or maybe since few were married they just had more time and inclination to have coffee and talk. I have spent the past few years reading and in a very few cases re-reading the "great" books and trying to learn more than the 9th grade civics version of history. I try to read things written from different historical perspectives. It has been a rewarding and enriching experience. I'm not too worried about today's students. I don't think they are too different from my generation.
Hey, I am in your same generation!

Short summary: The U. once had a core curriculum required of all students called The Intellectual Tradition of the West, or ITW for short. It was considered ground-breaking at the time (1070s). There was a guy named Jackson Newell who was the Dean of Liberal Education and ran the ITW program. (I knew Jack well.) Since we live in a world that was shaped by those intellectual traditions, I think it is important for students who aspire to be educated to at least have some thoughtful exposure to those intellectual traditions -- warts and all (and there are plenty of warts). English majors ought to have some serious exposure to Shakespeare, even if it's just in a survey. Now that I think about it, that should be part of what used to be called "General Ed" requirements. They were called Liberal Ed requirements in my day. Students should know there was a guy named Socrates whose thinking was important to Western civilization, that there was a Renaissance, a Reformation, and an Enlightenment. Poli Sci majors (I was one) ought to know the thinking (Cicero, Locke) that influenced the American Founders. And so on. Maybe there has been too great an emphasis on "dead white males." If so, add some more diverse streams of thought, but don't dump the ones that are part of who we are as a society. No, not every student will be interested in ITW, but is should not be banned, de-emphasized, or dismissed as undesirable or not worth knowing about. I think it's important for the rising generation (or at least the intellectually inclined among them) to have a sense of who we are and how we got to where we are. They might disagree with what earlier generations said or did, but they should at least know what they said and did and why it's important today.

That's all!