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Core Curriculum: Exploring the Human Condition
It is the purpose of the core curriculum to provide all students
with a solid academic foundation and the fundamental tools necessary to continue
developing their intellectual ability and inquiry. This goal extends beyond providing
answers. It must include raising questions important to the human condition: questions
that have been asked in the past; questions that examine our cultural heritage; questions
that are asked as a part of the exploration of thoughtful, responsible choices; questions
that grow in complexity as the students mature. Typically, these questions might be
phrased in the following ways:
How
did we, and others, get to this place in the world?
How
can we think about our lives in this world and discover our roles in it?
How
ought we, both personally and communally, respond to the world and its demands?
These questions, and others like them, have helped men and women
focus their spiritual and intellectual lives throughout history. Each generation searches
for its own answers, using the intellectual tools available to it. For today's students
that search must begin with an examination of their cultural heritage. The search needs to
include an active investigation of the complex choices demanded by the present, and also a
willingness to raise the questions necessary to stimulate continued inquiry.
To this end, the core curriculum provides students with the
opportunity to develop the following:
ability
to communicate effectively through speaking, listening, writing, reading critically and
thinking clearly;
understanding
of ways of inquiring and organizing knowledge that characterize the different academic
disciplines;
awareness
of connections among the different academic disciplines that integrate knowledge;
personal
responsibility for their own learning and the necessity of raising questions and searching
for answers;
ability
to make good moral and ethical judgments - judgments that are consciously made and
defensibly maintained.
These questions and capabilities do not exist in isolation from
one another. Together they form the intellectual, civic, moral and spiritual framework
from which responsible citizens respond to personal and communal questions; and they form
the goals of the liberal arts core curriculum at Saint Benedict's and Saint John's.
The core curriculum is completed by fulfilling specific
cross-disciplinary course requirements, disciplinary course requirements and flagged
course requirements. The demonstration of foreign language and mathematics proficiencies
is also a key component of the core curriculum.
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