Vision Statement

The Prologue to the original Curriculum II proposal which follows still serves as perhaps the best enunciation of the faculty's vision for Curriculum II.

Curriculum II

Curriculum II represents an integrated, sequential program of study, which satisfies the general education distributional requirements for graduation at Gustavus Adolphus College. Focusing on the relationship between the individual and the community, the Curriculum II program examines the Western intellectual and cultural tradition, including the diversity within it. The approximately sixty students from each class who participate in Curriculum II will be selected from a pool of applicants who identify themselves by their interest at the time of admission to the college. Curriculum II is not an honors program, and criteria for selection emphasize the desire to identify a group which represents a normal sample of the Gustavus student body. The primary criterion for selection is the expressed interest by the student in pursuing the kind of integrated study represented by Curriculum II.

Rationale

In the 12th century Barnard of Chartres wrote:

We are like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants; we see more things than the ancients and things more distant, but this is due neither to the sharpness of our sight nor to the greatness of our stature, but because we are raised and borne aloft on that giant mass.

This "giant mass" is all our history, our literature, our theologies, our political ideals, our slogans, values, ideas and habits of thought. Today we still ask the eternal questions and pursue the mystery at the center of our cosmology. We are convinced that study of our traditions will enable us to know ourselves more fully and will encourage us to achieve our human potential. Self-knowledge will lead to a deeper understanding of our own society, a heightened sensitivity to other cultures and a greater sense of responsibility to the struggle for world peace. It is as true of the person interested in science or social sciences as of the person interested in art, literature or history itself, that a "historical sense"--characterized by T.S. Eliot as "a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence"--more than any other aspect of our education liberates us from narrowness, parochialism and chauvinism. Thus, central to the integration of courses that make up Curriculum II is the concern to infuse in them a historical perspective.

The Program

Curriculum II constitutes a program of coordinated, sequential courses designed to instill this historical perspective through introducing students to the important questions and values within the Western tradition. It is intended to complement the more focused and specialized study represented by the student's major and to provide a context of tradition in which students can see their major disciplines in relation to learning in general. Courses in the sequence will present ideas, creative works, and people in their historical context of the various disciplines so that our students can appreciate the relationship between the past and the present. The central value questions of the past and the present will be presented so that our students may better understand and interpret current responses of society to these questions. Students will be presented with the philosophical and historical significance of the Biblical tradition in Western civilization. They will be presented with knowledge about the physical universe in order that they may recognize themselves as an integral part of it and accept responsibility as stewards. Students will explore social institutions and interpersonal relations so that they may understand the questions raised within society as well as develop tolerance for those whose answers to the questions may differ from their own. Through foreign language study students will expand and deepen their understanding of a foreign culture. Curriculum II students will be encouraged to look beyond the Western tradition to see themselves as members of a global community. Throughout the four years, a series of social and intellectual experiences, including meetings, retreats, fine arts events, field trips and discussions, will encourage students to reflect upon the process in which they are participating, to apply their growing understanding of their cultural tradition to issues related to their major field of study and to the roles they will play as world citizens.

The total experience of Curriculum II should encourage students to identify or develop the values by which their decisions and actions are guided and to realize that these values are related to the social and cultural norms with which they live. The experience should nurture intellectual curiosity and integrity and should prepare students to answer the questions, "Who am I?" and "To what am I committed?"