> Forcing working-class students _into_ a core, just as much as forcing them
> _out_ of a core, makes the elitist assumption that working class adults do
> not know what's good for them.
It's not about not knowing what's good for them, but about being exposed to the wider range of options and lines of thought more often available to more privileged students in a range of ways. I think this is important, but no more than a quite different point.
I don't agree with either protecting traditional curricula by making them compulsory or compelling students to study a curriculum for the sake of reinforcing a set of social values through a selected canon of humanities. However, less "functional", "profitable", disciplines, fields and forms do need to be available to students.
We don't have a compulsory "liberal arts education" in Australia after highschool. I'm glad about that. But I do think that humanities and social science fields deserve special support, endorsement, and protection when it's much harder for them to sustain themselves by business deals with non-academic organisations... and even when they can they often shouldn't.
Catherine
------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP at ArtsIT: http://admin.arts.usyd.edu.au/horde/imp/