Core Classes Fill Requirements

Erica S. Schacter's editorial "More Courses in the Core" (ed., Mar. 21, 1995) makes an interesting and valuable addition to the debate on the validity of the Core as an entity and the logic of the requirements as they currently stand. She misses, however, an important point. Although humanities courses cannot be substituted for core requirements, core classes themselves can often be used to fulfill humanities concentration requirements. Thus, for example, many a Social Studies concentrator fulfills part of his or her political theory requirement with a Moral Reasoning class, thereby killing the same proverbial two birds as a Chemistry concentrator who meets a Science A requirement with "Chem 10."

The faculty of the Core Curriculum should reevaluate the Core's success at "introduc[ing] students to the major approaches to knowledge," but the proposed proliferation of double-counting and course substituting does not solve the problem. Sasha Dichter '95-'96