
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

	Theories on the Contemporary Curriculum
	Professor Bender’s suggestions for thinking about the contemporary curriculum:<br> <br> 1) The power of the disciplines has become so strong in the organization of universities that it makes our tasks difficult. We need to live with it and deploy it, rather than rail against it. <br> <br> 2) Entering students at the top tier schools are not ignorant of disciplinary knowledge. Students come with a great deal more awareness of the variety of disciplines than they did in the past. We must trust the students and let them pursue their interests.<br> <br> 3) Students need to know how to use disciplines outside of their academic context, and to address the need of personhood and citizenship. <br> <br> 4) They must recognize the global extent and temporal depth of the archive of human experience and knowledge available to them. They need to develop the capacity to remove from analysis the gift of the disciplines, to interpretation and judgment or, as William James put it, to discrimination.<br> <br> 5) The students need to develop the capacity for the synthesis of different disciplinary knowledges, as well as the capacity to make connections between those knowledges and the knowledges and experiences of everyday life. Students need the experience or need to acquire the habit of translating or achieving dialogue between academic knowledge and everyday knowledge. <br> <br> 6) The above should not occur in the first two years of a student’s college experience. This work needs to be done in parallel with the disciplinary learning with students who have an increasing mastery of a discipline, but whom we do not want to be wholly captured by a discipline.<br> <br> <br> <br>

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