UCLA wants to revamp
general education requirement
Kaustuv Basu, April 30, 2012
Critics of a proposal
by the University of California Los Angeles to add a compulsory course on
community and conflict to its general education requirements for the College of
Letters and Science say that the idea say is akin to peddling old wine in a new
bottle, and not much different from a diversity requirement that was voted down
by faculty in 2004. Next month, faculty members are expected to vote on the
measure, variations of which have been decades in the making. In 2004, faculty
members rejected a proposal that would require a diversity course before
graduation. Before that, in the mid-1990s, there had been talk of a similar
requirement, but the Academic Senate at the time decided to encourage inclusion
of multicultural studies into different courses, according to reports. Faculty
leaders and students who have worked on the current proposal say that it is
broader and thus more acceptable to faculty members…Michael Meranze, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee,
stressed in an e-mail that that the community and conflict requirement is not
designed to be a diversity requirement. “The requirement is quite serious about
the problem of community and conflict as it has emerged as a modern problem.
Again, this emphasis on the modern forms does not place some sort of
chronological limit on the possible topics for courses,” he said…
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