New curricula not only give birth to new courses but have the
potential for killing off old ones. This proposal asks the CRC to consider the
impact of their decisions on the current Humanities Sequence.
At the inception of the so-called New
Curriculum in 1967, one of Furman’s most successful curricular
inventions was the Humanities 11, 12, 13 course sequence (generally known
simply as Humanities). It
has been popular with students—they often enthusiastically report on their appreciation of
this course years afterwards—and with faculty. The thrust of the course, for those not familiar with it, is
that it is a year-long, team-taught, interdisciplinary course with emphasis on
the great works of the Western tradition, covered in chronological order. The
course fulfills Furman’s GER requirements as an equivalent for English 12 (or
another literature course), for History 11, and for Religion 11 or 12. Indeed, one of the reasons for the
course’s popularity has been that it has fulfilled three GERs over the year.
Other reasons for Humanities’ success include the
following. Humanities is unique in that it is the only course that
covers the whole sweep of Western history from
Further, the course is well organized in that it has always had
a course coordinator who sees to it that administrative tasks are dealt with
and that the thematic unities of the course are maintained over all three
terms. In other words, while some professors move in
and out of the course on a term by term basis, one person has traditionally
been in the course all three terms. All the professors attend class each day: the
course is not taught in a sort of “drop by and give your lecture”
approach. The morale of
the teaching staff has generally been high because the choice to teach in
Humanities has been voluntary. It is very rare that a department has to appoint
someone to teach in the sequence.
One other surprising aspect has been that the number of students
who want to take the class has been at about 100 for many, many years (with
obvious occasional dips and rises). Thus, a predictable equilibrium has been
attained. Generally speaking the students who choose Humanities like to read
and discuss ideas a bit more than the rest of the student body. Faculty
advisors seem to understand the course’s approach and have helped serve
as an important filter for getting only those students into the course who really want to be there and who really
have the abilities to handle the (fairly heavy) reading load, and for keeping
those students out who really wouldn’t
appreciate Humanities. I
think, again, the voluntary aspect of the course for the students is another important
reason for the course’s success.
Given suggestions made to the CRC committee, two questions beg a
response: (1) how would the Humanities sequence relate to new curricular and
calendar changes, and (2) could it serve as a model for a freshman seminar? To
the first question, I think Humanities could survive as a year-long course in a
semester system, provided it satisfies some GER requirements. To the second
question, I think the answer is more problematic. I don’t see
how a required freshman seminar experience can replicate the strengths of the Humanities
sequence—a course coordinator, voluntary participation by the faculty,
and voluntary participation by the students. In my opinion, a freshman seminar would be a different
animal altogether.
Posted by love at
November 1, 2004 11:00 AM
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