Posted on 03/26/2025 12:23:50 PM PDT by Twotone
On March 24, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill laying groundwork for major higher education improvements after more than a century of U.S. universities undermining American moral and intellectual virtues. The law vaults Utah toward competing with Florida for the best higher education reforms that support American self-governance.
Senate Bill 334 requires “every student at Utah State University to take a full year-and-a-half course in Western civilization and an additional one-semester course in American civics,” writes Stanley Kurtz, co-author of a model bill inspiring this law. These new core courses will be taught by professors employed by a new center at Utah State dedicated to classical education and the “great books.” After approximately a year of piloting this approach at Utah State, it will be extended to every state university.
“I’m thrilled Utah State University is taking the lead to pilot a redesign of general education through the new center for civics excellence,” Cox said in a Monday signing statement. “This center will be tasked with building out a general education curriculum focused on viewpoint diversity, civil discourse and helping our students develop the analytical skills necessary to contribute in the public square. This curriculum will be a model for all our public institutions in Utah and nationally.”
A public transparency and accountability provision “requires every section of the course to post an accurate syllabus, with the instructor’s name, every required or recommended reading, a description of the subject of each lecture and discussion,” Kurtz writes. The bill passed the Utah Senate with unanimous Republican support and one Democrat vote. In Utah’s House, eight Democrats and all Republicans supported the bill.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Good.
Excellent!
I would prefer that students pick the classes they take, rather than having politicians telling them which classes they have to take.
This should be taught at the high school level. Along with math, English and science. Trade school arts and home economics should be taught there too.
Bucks the trend of books written by dead white men.
Actually there is a point to a wide variety of reading (not elimination of Western culture, of course).
I remember a writer in the early 1970s who wrote: “Every piece of fiction assumes a white person is the subject, or else adds ‘the Chinese man’ or ‘the black woman’, sometimes to jarring effect.”
It was the “we” the author, the subject of the fiction and the reader all shared.
I started noticing that.
Later the many black and Asian and Latino writers were highlighted and promoted. Before that James Baldwin and others were special exceptions.
Is there a list of these books? I have a 5,000 year project to populate with about 3,000 books.
Read the classics, including biographies of the Founding Fathers and Mothers, and political treatises like the Federalist Papers.
I meant the old DEI trend was to eliminate works by dead white men.
I took a Poly Sci course in college that helped shape my understanding about our system. (It was during non-woke era so you got real info not propaganda)
I had the old wonderful set when I started high school.
Great Books of the Western World. Many arguments later and I wouldn’t want the liberal Democrat editors running the world now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
A girl my age saw my shelves of books and then the 54 Great Books in my room. Then saw How To Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler (one of the editors of the big set).
“You read all these books and even have one on how to read a book.” We both laughed.
Pathetic.
One single semester for Americana?
We really need to start realizing that The U.S. eclipsed the European West and left it in the dust.
GIANT step in the right direction
Zane Grey wrote westerns but they probably don’t intend to include him. I read one of his novels which was hostile to Mormons.
I have no problem with required courses. Letting students take “what they want” is how we wound up with gender studies, etc.
But what about Heather Has Two Mommies? Still there?
Just like Columbia.
bttt
“I would prefer that students pick the classes they take”
You mean, like ... now? That’s the method now, and it hasn’t been helpful.
bump
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