A Grand Illusion: Continuing the Debate on General Education

Basic curriculum reform is difficult at best to achieve. Although it was quickly obtained in the 1960s, when grade inflation and the proliferation of relevant courses accompanied the elimination of requirements, the result was faculty withdrawal or acquiescence, not basic reform. Consequently, recent moves by Harvard, Stanford, and other prestigious schools to redesign undergraduate programs represent the first attempt at fundamental curriculum reform since the 1930s and \u2740s. Unfortunately, because these efforts come largely in reaction to the changes of the 1960s and to the disturbing decline in undergraduate enrollments, especially in the humanities, they tend to offer old wine in new bottles. They are characterized by retreat on the part of overly tenured, largely male faculties to the good ole days of training scientifically-literate Renaissance men, rather than steps forward based on nonsexist education offered for over a decade now by teachers of women\u27s studies and ethnic studies and by feminists in various disciplines. Given the economic retrenchment in higher education, significant curriculum change is unlikely to occur again in major institutions before the end of the century. Even in the best of economic times, basic curriculum reform seems to appear in forty-to-fifty-year cycles. If history is any guide, it is unrealistic to anticipate more reform than has already taken place, at least at institutions like Harvard and Stanford and those that emulate them. I point out these patterns because the suggestions for improving humanities programs offered by Carolyn Lougee in the Spring issue of the Women\u27s Studies Quarterly, as well as those offered by Christine Froula and Adrienne Munich, rest on the assumption that the frugal 1980s and \u2790s will be more conducive to curriculum reform at these elitist schools than the prosperous 1950s and \u2760s

Closeup: Sacramento Women\u27s Studies Program

Women\u27s Studies at Sacramento began with two courses in the spring of 1970, Women in the Modern World and Women in the Law, an extension course: today, there are twenty-six courses and eight extension courses. That fall, 1970, history professor Joan Hoff Wilson and government professor Kirsten Amundsen sponsored a course on the women\u27s movement, The Liberation of the American Woman, oriented for both day and evening women students as well as for community women. To avoid the problem of alienation in large groups, Wilson and Amundsen had speakers for two hours, then broke into small groups for discussion. Speakers included Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Florynce Kennedy, Robin Morgan, Aileen Hernandez, and many others

The tweties : the critical issues

xxv, 163 p.; 23 cm

American Business and Foreign Policy: 1920–1933

With increasing world economic interdependence and a new position as a creditor nation, the American business community became more actively and vocally concerned with foreign policy after World War I than ever before. This book details the response of American businessmen to such foreign policy issues as the tariff, disarmament, allied debts, loans, and the Manchurian crisis. Far from presenting a monolithic front, the business community fragmented into nationalist and internationalist camps, according to this study. Division over each issue varied with the size, type, and geographic region of the various business interests, and despite their formidable economic power, business internationalists are shown to have played a more limited role on certain issues than has been formerly assumed. Unfortunately for the future development of United States diplomacy and world stability, no institutional means for tempering business influence on the formulation of foreign policy, or for coordinating economic and political foreign policies, were developed in the twenties. Joan Hoff Wilson is an associate professor of history at Sacramento State College. She is a former Woodrow Wilson and Fulbright fellow.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_political_history/1020/thumbnail.jp