The Case for a Core Curriculum

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.”
—Thomas Jefferson

On September 26th, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) released the findings of an unprecedented review of higher education’s efficiency in increasing student knowledge of America’s history and crucial institutions. The study, conducted by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy (UCDPP), asked more than 14,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities 60 multiple-choice questions. The test determined student knowledge in four subjects: (1) American history; (2) government; (3) America and the world; (4) the market economy. Of the schools polled, Brown’s performance was among the worst.

ISI’s report presents four primary findings, all of which pertain directly to Brown’s educational methods. The first key finding reiterates the title of ISI’s report—The Coming Crisis In Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions. “America’s colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America’s history and institutions,” ISI confidently testifies. Evidence for this is found within the results of the test scores: seniors, on average, scored a mere 1.5 percent higher than freshmen. That average score was 53.2 percent. Even with a most generous grading curve, this is an F.

Worse than the failing grade, however, were the particulars. For instance, only 47.9 percent of seniors knew that the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” is found within the Declaration of Independence. And 72.8 percent failed to name the source of the idea of “a wall of separation” between church and state.

The ISI’s second key finding describes Brown University’s unique role within UCDPP’s probe into higher education. A school’s “prestige doesn’t pay off,” the report declares. “Colleges that rank high in the U.S. News and World Report 2006 ranking were ranked low in the ISI ranking of learning in these key fields.” While seniors at schools such as Rhodes College and Calvin College were found to have increased their knowledge of American history and institutions by 11.6% and 9.5% respectively, this study discovered that students attending more prestigious universities experience a moribund concern for civic literacy during their college years. According to the test results, 16 schools exhibited “negative learning,” a term that describes a situation where freshmen demonstrated more civic knowledge than the seniors. Among the 50 schools surveyed, Yale ranked 44th with a –1.5 percent change in civic literacy. Brown ranked 47th with a –2.7 percent change. And Cornell ranked 48th with a –3.3 percent change. “Our ‘best’ colleges and universities are the worst offenders when it comes to a failure to teach America’s history and institutions,” ISI reports.

The third key finding is not a shocker: “Students don’t learn what colleges don’t teach.” Despite the obvious (and properly smug) nature of this declaration, it should also catch the ears of Brown affiliates, as it refers to a loose curriculum structure. ISI’s report actually reiterates what many conservatives have been saying for years—“Civic learning is significantly greater at schools with comparatively traditional core curricula.” This “discovery” reinforces a popular criticism of open curriculums, that failing to require the study of traditional subjects will deteriorate a nation’s memory, and therefore its meaning and purpose.

Proponents of open curriculums often argue that universities such as Brown, that don’t require the study of core subjects, still offer a wide variety of voluntary courses in American history, political science, and economics. But with the freedom to stray from traditional subjects, UCDPP found that students tend to do so (perhaps as a result of what is portrayed as more relevant and stylish topics on these campuses). The ISI tells us, “Students at colleges and universities that make courses related to America’s history, ideals, and the Constitution more available, attractive, and even required showed significant gains in civic learning,” and “even when controlling for numerous variables that influence learning, seniors at schools with reasonably strong core curricula…had double the gain in civic learning compared with those seniors at schools without a coherent core curriculum—for example, Brown, Cornell, and Stanford.”

ISI’s fourth and final verdict is that “greater civic learning goes hand-in-hand with more active citizenship. Students who demonstrated greater learning of America’s history and its institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns.”

To many members of the Brown community this finding may cause confusion. A campus as politically charged as Brown’s is certainly made up of many students with a healthy tendency to participate in their civic responsibilities, even if the University is failing to educate them on such matters. But according to UCDPP’s study, it was discovered that a high degree of civic involvement was very much dependent on a high degree of civic knowledge. “And the factor most strongly correlated with students registering to vote and voting is the amount of civic learning that takes place during college.”

ISI’s report concludes by providing important recommendations that could help to fix these important problems in higher education. These proposals include measuring student learning, holding colleges and universities accountable for educational output, implementing required courses, building academic centers on campus that focus on topics deprived of attention, and informing as many people as possible of this looming condition of ignorance.

One troubling assessment of UCDPP’s study is that the results come as no surprise to many educators. These teachers and administrators have turned a blind eye to the alarming reality that higher education has become something of a failure, an unprincipled world thinly veiled by a smokescreen of prestige—a place where students now go to be sensitized to multicultural theory, and often graduate without having learned anything relevant to living within a constitutional republic. Brown University’s late Frank Newman once testified this lack of integrity:

“The real reason we don’t test is, we would rather not know…If we start measuring, we will start finding out that you didn’t learn…about the great traditions of Western thought. Then we have a nasty little problem on our hands.”

The question now is: Does Brown University care? Will the results of UCDPP’s study be sneered at in the fashion so common of university elites? Will the Ivy establishment continue to believe in the infallibility of Ira Magaziner’s New Curriculum? Or will Brown view these findings as the maximum point of the pendulum, pulling what was once liberal back from the left, with the hopes that the University may settle in a place comfortably distant from reckless radicalism?

Offering credence to years of warnings over a coming generation of citizens disinterested in, or incapable of, functioning within their own democratic nation, ISI’s assessment now provides evidence of a civic catastrophe that is not merely imminent, but already upon us. Brown University should recognize its contribution to this crisis, and do something about it.

The full ISI report can be found at isi.org. Travis Rowley ’02 is the author of Out of Ivy: How a Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative.