Gen ed courses provide important knowlege base on global, cultural issues

As head of the Near Eastern Studies and as one who has taught NES 140, I wish to respond to the anonymous author of Friday's editorial who calls for the abolition of general education courses, including the rejection of the new core curriculum proposal. NES 140 is mentioned in the editorial.

General education courses are intended to provide students with the basis for broader knowledge than they would acquire if they focused merely on what they deemed suitable for future employment. To know nothing about the world beyond the United States, for example, would mean a student was ignorant even if he/she had a degree in a specific discipline. In a democracy especially, an informed citizenry is assumed to be the basis on which our representatives are elected and judged.

NES 140, Middle East Humanities, deals with Islamic civilization in the Middle East. Your writer would seem to be either ignorant of, or uninterested in, the fact that the Islamic world and the Middle East are frequently in the news and that it might be worthwhile to know the basis of that civilization - just as it would be worthwhile to study Asian civilization for example. With the globalization of so much of our economy, not to mention our politics, to claim the right to be ignorant of that world is not something I would wish to brag about in a newspaper- especially when the writer misspells "requirements" in the leader [requirments]. Perhaps the author rejects the idea that knowing how to write or to spell is advisable for a journalism major.

Unfortunately, the proposed core curriculum displays the same disregard for knowledge of the broader world shown in the Wildcat editorial. The requirements for taking courses in non-Western cultures and in the areas of race, gender, ethnicity or class have been cut in half; one must take three units either in non-Western cultures or in a course pertaining to race, gender, ethnicity or class instead in three units in both areas. Furthermore, this restrictiveness in exposure to such courses violates the spirit if not the letter of the university's strategic plan and the guidelines of the Arizona Board of Regents which call for "preparing students for an increasingly diverse and technological world," and for creating "undergraduate curricula that prepare successful lifelong learners for an increasingly interdependent global society."

The fact that the Faculty Senate appears willing to accept a plan that violates the intentions of ABOR and the university's strategic plan with respect to such curricula is nothing to brag about either, and raises questions about the Senate's function as guardian of the stated goals of the University of Arizona.

By Charles D. Smith
Arizona Daily Wildcat
February 10, 1997