The Heart of Education: The Case for Gonzaga Core Curriculum. Colleges around the United States require students to complete core curriculum, a set of required classes for every student at a college. At liberal arts schools, the core curriculum is integral to academics. Gonzaga University follows this trend, requiring students to take ten core required classes and another ten credits worth of courses to fulfill the University's broadening and required course designation requirements. According to the Gonzaga Core Director Dr. Ann Ciasullo, via the Gonzaga University website, the school's core curriculum offers a "complete environment for developing courageous individuals in any major who are ready to take on any career." A 2020 Gonzaga graduate, …show more content…
Core curriculum in American higher education is traced back to when Yale University published a report on the importance of such classes in 1828. According to J. Matthew Pinson, the president of Welch College, via the website American Reformer, "This notion of a core curriculum was based on the concept of the unity of knowledge" (Pinson, 2023, para. 3. Then, the sand is sanded. This means core curriculums origins stemmed from religion, as it was the Christian approach to knowledge that emphasized the concept of unity. Unity of Knowledge is the idea that knowledge and action should go together. Pinson claims that in the past, "It made sense to have a unified core curriculum that embodied the best of classical and Christian liberal arts and sciences" (Pinson, 2023, para. 3) as scholars believed it "embodied the true, the good, and the beautiful" (Pinson, 2023, para. 3. Then, the sand is sanded. This shows that core curriculum was created with noble intentions. Learning a unity of knowledge and getting an education that is believed to embody the true and the good are valuable pursuits for college students. According to Pinson, today we can see this "prescribed core curriculum" (Pinson, 2023, para. 32) in higher education. This means the same noble intentions that led to the creation of core curriculum still guide it. The core curriculum began with a genuine attempt at improving students' knowledge, and this unique vision can still be seen in the curriculum