Why Core Curriculum Isn't as Evil as I First Thought
by Beth Onusko

Originally published March 9, 2000 on studentadvantage.com.

I came to college a very focused student, having been blessed since childhood with a freakishly strong sense of direction. I was destined to be an English major, and I was not about to let anything keep me from forging out down my life's path.

My school has "core curriculum" (yours might call it "general education requirements"), but I paid it little attention when I applied. What did I care? What did it even mean? I knew I'd have to take a handful of required classes, but so what — I'd have to do that at any school, right? I figured it would be easy, that I would encounter the same material I'd already covered during my four years of high school.

Ha!

Freshman year, I was forced to read thousands of pages of obscure art-history criticism, Freudian theory, complicated texts from dead Roman guys who debated what makes a poem "sublime," and a handful of crime noir novels from the '50s. I couldn't take it. I quickly realized that core was consuming me. And I still had well over three semesters' worth of classes to complete in order to reach the end of my seemingly endless string of requirements!

I felt like a woman who was ready to devote herself to a single person for the rest of her life, but whose father was forcing her to date other men. Give me the meat of my English major, I cried! I'm ready to tackle what I came here to learn!

But instead of being allowed to delve into my literary delight, I was held back and forced to toil over excruciatingly boring busy work.

Or so I thought.

When during my first semester I learned I had been placed in some random survey course on Latin-American history, I whined like a baby. My textbook for the class was a messy slop of the civic and cultural histories of dozens of seemingly similar yet painfully (for me) unique countries. Worse, they all possessed languages and cultures I was miles away from understanding.

What was the point of taking this class? I knew I would never actually use whatever tiny amount of random knowledge I might retain; I wanted to be a writer, not a historian. Why would I need to know what year Cortez came to the New World if one of my goals in life was to write for a women's magazine? These core curriculum classes were horrible! Core curriculum was beginning to look a bit like torture, but I resolved to accept my fate and take the course.

And you know what? It really wasn't that bad a class. Though I embarrassed myself with my horrendous Spanish accent, by the time the semester was through I had managed to actually retain a rough mental sketch of an entire continent's history. And, even better, I gained a lot of knowledge about my roommates' native cultures. It really helped me relate more to their heritage and, ultimately, helped me better understand what made them who they are.

I even got a hard-earned lesson in work ethic. The weekly onslaught of readings and quizzes helped me adjust to the reality of college life, and to realize just how much effort it can take to stay afloat here in academia. If I'd been allowed to dive into my major straightaway, I would barely have been able to retain any of the information I was learning - I'd have been so swept up in trying to adjust to college academics that I would have been unable to focus on what I was being taught in class.

I learned that "the core" is just that. It's the foundation from which I can build my life's endlessly evolving education. It's the strong skeleton that I can later fatten up with the flesh of my major.

Now at the halfway point of my college career, I look back over my first few semesters and my mouth gapes. It's almost eerie: For so long, I toiled in subjects that barely held my attention, but now that I've taken enough core classes I can step back and see how it all seems to fit together.

My knowledge of Freud in psych class, for instance, helped me analyze crime novels. The notion of the "sublime" from that Roman theory class melds with the art criticism I have studied. It's as if all of these core classes were a huge pile of puzzle pieces that, once studied and experimented with, snapped perfectly together to form a breathtaking mountain scene.

The whole ominous process is beginning to make sense to me. This entire time, I wasn't just taking a random group of classes; I was unwittingly constructing a foundation of knowledge that will support me for the rest of my life.

Now, I stand poised to finally begin taking classes for my major. I feel excited. I feel focused. And above all, I feel prepared.

Wow. Who would have thought there was method to all of this madness?

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