I found that core, and I still find it lacking. It is pretty much the standard, and rather dated. It’s strength is in fact its standardization, not its brilliance.
My cynicism comes from some top academics who shared with me principals not taught, or not widely taught in the US, such as qualitative philosophy, history and religion, and military history. For only through this do you see the context, errors and intellectual failings that haunt our society to this day in this prized curriculum.
This is why there is such conformity in the neosocs, from Rousseau to Emerson, to George Fitzhugh, Al Gore and Dave Foreman. This is why they endlessly try to force their failed beliefs on everyone else, and why we have Obama as our president.
It is also where you see the foundations of classical philosophy in Abraham Lincoln, and the other people who have stood against the neosoc philosophy.
Do not confuse this standardized curriculum with western civilization. It is just one side of civilization, and one that has always failed where tried, yet continues to crank out new adherents. From that perspective, it is almost anti-intellectual, an exercise in the insanity of endlessly repeating a task that you know will fail.