Core Curriculum (Columbia College)

Created in the wake of World War I, it became the framework for many similar educational models throughout the United States, and has played an influential role in the incorporation of the concept of Western civilization into the American college curriculum.

Later in its history, especially in the 1990s, it became a heavily contested form of learning, seen by some as an appropriate foundation of a liberal arts education, and by others as a tool of promoting a Eurocentric or Anglocentric society by solely focusing on the works of "dead white men".

[3] Largely driven by student protests, the Core in recent decades has been revised to add focus on non-Western cultures, as well as postcolonial works to the literature and philosophy sequences.

[5]: 8  In the "Full course", as set out in the 1843 revision of the college's statutes, in addition to four years of the classics and German, freshmen were to study algebra, geometry, and English grammar and composition; sophomores, trigonometry and solid geometry, levelling, navigation, chemistry, physics, and rhetoric; juniors, "practical astronomy", chemistry, geology, the "principles of taste and criticism", logic, and English and modern European literature; seniors, differential and integral calculus, mechanics, philosophy and religion, and English composition.

[4][8] This gradual thaw, along with university's move to Morningside Heights just prior to World War I, set the stage for a major change in curricular focus in the early 20th century.

[8] Structured after "Contemporary Civilization", "Humanities A" expected students to read one book per week, a workload that placed unique burdens on freshmen.

The list of books read in "Literature Humanities" would constantly shift over time; the first female author to be included in the curriculum was Jane Austen with the addition of Pride and Prejudice to the syllabus in 1985, two years after Columbia College became coeducational,[8] while the first Black author to be incorporated into "Literature Humanities" was Toni Morrison, whose Song of Solomon was added in 2015.

Theodore de Bary in which he urged the university to expand the Core to include topics in non-Western cultures, in line with its original mission to facilitate discussion in contemporary issues.

Students are also required to pass a swimming test before receiving their diplomas, a common feature among Ivy League colleges.

One section of the Contemporary Civilization Source Book in the early 1940s. There were two parts containing ten sections each. This copy shows it in use at Yale University in addition to Columbia.
President Frederick A. P. Barnard was one of the earliest proponents of the elective system in the 19th century.
Of the names listed on the Butler Library colonnade, only Demosthenes has not at some point in time been required reading in the Core Curriculum. [ 10 ]
The Iliad , traditionally attributed to the Greek poet Homer , is one of the few works that has never left the Core Curriculum. [ 2 ]