Center Faculty Advisory Committee Member Francesca Murphy on Notre Dame's Curriculum Review

Author: Stephen Freddoso

Over at First Things, Center Faculty Advisory Committee member Francesca Murphy has published a piece regarding Notre Dame's current curriculum review and the perils of goal-based education.

"Faculty often quarrel over curricula. That’s as it should be. A curriculum, especially its core courses required of all students, is an educational institution’s constitution. To tell a young person he must take this or that course announces a university’s highest priorities. This makes a curriculum review a battlefield. At the University of Notre Dame we are presently conducting such a review, and a hot point for debate is whether the university should maintain its requirement of two theology and two philosophy courses. This requirement has long been thought essential to the Catholic mission of Notre Dame. But the “two theology, two philosophy” requirement may not survive this round of curriculum revision."