
Curricular Review: Redefining a World-Class Education		39:41
History, Structure, and Content of American Academic Culture
	Introduction: American Academic Culture	7:13
	The Shaping of the American Curriculum	6:57
	Building an American Academic Culture	8:57
	Theories on the Contemporary Curriculum	6:41
	Conclusion: The Challenges of General Education	3:46
	Audience Question & Answer	8:05

	Audience Question & Answer
	<b>Question: </b>I wanted to comment from the point of view of a scientist. I see science departments and disciplines as being much more dynamic and changeable than the impression I’m getting from you…At Harvard, our fields change, they’re extremely interdisciplinary. We attempt to hire people between molecular biology and physics and psychology. The problem is this interdisciplinary interaction and dynamism doesn’t get adequately reflected in undergraduate teaching. We go about teaching our courses in traditional, narrow ways that doesn’t reflect the way we go about our intellectual business. That’s one of the challenges I see in this curricular review. I’m leery of your credit structure to try and remedy this. Having cluster requirements worries me, although I keep an open mind about it. I would much rather see this reflected more at a grassroots level, where we take our courses and explicitly make them… more introductory courses, bring two different disciplines together at a very early stage in education. Your thoughts please? <br> <br> <b>Question: </b>What do you mean by discipline, when you use the word discipline? Next question has to do with your own experience with curricular reviews, reforms and proposals. Looking back historically, what do you see as major impediments to large scale change in the curriculum? <br> <br> <b>Question: </b>I’m struck by this contradiction that you’ve laid out. On the one hand, the power of disciplines, our dependence on disciplines, difficulty of transcending disciplines. On the other hand, the need to get outside of those grooves, as we teach, perhaps even for our own intellectual vitality. I wonder what you would think of trying to create some general education, and some work perhaps within concentrations, around recognizing these realities, and in fact setting it up around conversations and debates across disciplines where you don’t expect people to actually pretend that they don’t do what they do, but you recognize the student’s experience needs to transcend that and whether you’ve had any experiences doing that? <br> <br>

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