Conflict over core curriculum at New College of Florida

Amid efforts to overhaul general education courses across the state, New College of Florida is making sweeping changes to its core curriculum. Faculty members say the effort, driven by conservative ideologues, will limit students’ access to knowledge and undermine NCF’s founding mission as Florida’s only public liberal arts college.

The changes follow recent legislation that prompted universities across the state quit numerous general education coursesmainly related to pressing political and social issues. Despite protests from faculty, public universities have dropped dozens of courses such as Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity, Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies and Sociology of Gender to comply with SB 266, which took effect in mid-2023. It bans core courses that “distort significant historical events or include curriculum that teaches identity politics,” as well as courses “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were designed to support social , political and economic inequality”.

Critics argue that New College, which has already made curriculum changes unrelated to SB 266, goes further than the law requires. They blame a slate of conservative trustees, Gov. Ron DeSantis, appointed in early 2023 to reimagining NCF in the image of Hillsdale Collegea renowned private Christian institution in Michigan. One of their first actions was hire former GOP legislator Richard Corcoran as president. Now critics say NCF leaders are radically overhauling the core curriculum, limiting class options with little support from faculty and closed input from outside influences.

Sudden redesign

Three years ago, in the fall of 2021, NKF launched Core Curriculum “Create Your Course”described as “signature program» A unique feature of New College that gave students significant flexibility in choosing general education courses.

“Many students have a negative view of generations; they just want to eliminate these courses,” said one current New College professor, speaking on condition of anonymity. Inside Higher Education. “But for us, because students could choose from such a wide menu, I think students probably found the general courses more interesting and were more motivated.”

Three years later, NCF is revamping its core curriculum.

Wide discretion has disappeared, replaced by a narrow range of course options. Classes including Introduction to Sociology, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Religion in the Americas, a course on Latin American film studies, and a section on feminist writings from Africa will no longer count towards general education credits. In some cases, students have no choice at all; To satisfy the NCF liberal arts requirement, the only option is now a half-semester course in Odyssey. (When NCF introduced this course last fall to beta test its inclusion in the core curriculum, the implementation was so sudden that officials were struggling to find guest lecturers to teach.)

Faculty are concerned that the lack of facilities limits students’ freedom of action and that the new curriculum makes NCF like other members of the public university system, where it has traditionally stood out due to its small size and unusual nature.

Some argue that legislators and newly appointed NCF administrators share the blame.

“Not only is New College adhering to the Legislature’s restrictions, but they’ve even gone further by limiting the choices students have, which is the opposite of what it used to be and runs counter to the school’s mission,” the anonymous source said. said the teacher.

Another NCF professor, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while faculty were “participating in the development” of the new core curriculum, “the ever-changing demands of the administration made the process chaotic, with a lot of movement.” goalposts, starting over and turning down good offers.” The source added that although teachers signed off on the basic curriculum structure presented last spring, administrators later changed it without their input, dropping a required writing class in favor of another elective course. They are concerned that elective options will be limited to “courses that fit a particular ideological model.”

Faculty member Amy Reed, who served on NCF’s board of directors at the time, objected to the change at the June meeting. She said it represented a “significant change” and said there was “no justification for unilateral changes” after teachers approved the curriculum structure.

Despite Reed’s objections, trustees approved the proposal.

New College did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Inside Higher Education. But various administrators and trustees have spoken publicly about the major changes to the curriculum, offering insight into the philosophical underpinnings of the changes.

In August, NCF Trustee Chris Rufo write to City magazinecalled the ongoing curriculum overhaul “the hard work of reform” aimed at reinventing New College as a classic liberal arts college, as requested by the governor. Rufo argued that “New College has the opportunity to create a curriculum on par with our private sector counterparts such as Hillsdale College and demonstrate that public universities must not succumb to the ideological takeover of the left. With sufficient political will, they can govern themselves on completely different principles.”

Fellow Trustee Mark Bauerlein, write to Federalist last year argued that college curricula had deviated from national direction by emphasizing “shallow diversity” instead of developing core values.

“This is a matter of student health. Liberalism and progressivism took aim at the institutions and ideals that once gave youth a purposeful foreground in their lives (nation, church, community, family, tradition, Western civilization, the American way of life),” Bauerlein wrote.

He concluded that “a fixed, consistent, superior core is one way to make up for what has been lost. We need it not only at New College, but in every liberal arts school in America.”

Dark origins

According to New college documentsthe new core curriculum is built on two concepts: logo and techne. Logos described as “the interrelationship of mind, language, logic, reflection, communication, order and meaning”, while techne emphasizes “the value of applied knowledge: creating, experiencing, analyzing, experimenting, and solving.” Materials for the updated curriculum include illustrations showing Socrates wearing a virtual reality headset, Benjamin Franklin flying a drone, and Thurgood Marshall talking to a robot.

According to the draft plan, NCF envisions the new curriculum as a combination of reasoned discourse and applied knowledge that will “provide students with a transformative and cohesive educational experience.” “While these courses will inherently foster community among students, Interim President Corcoran firmly believes that New College should provide an exceptional academic experience that brings together and helps all New College students, both within their cohort and year after year successfully enter into your life. after college.”

Some concepts for NCF’s new core curriculum, although not mentioned publicly, appear to have emerged from discussions between Corcoran and former Harvard University tutor David Cain.

Public records obtained Inside Higher Education show that Kane approached Corcoran and other officials in April 2023, seeking a job leading NCF’s data science program and proposing a curriculum overhaul based on classical education. In an email to Corcoran, Kane introduced himself as someone who taught data science at Harvard University before he was “expelled for the usual nonsensical reasons”—a nod to the controversy over racist blog posts he allegedly wrote what prompted Harvard to terminate his contract in 2020 and Simmons University will cancel classes in 2022.

His emails to Corcoran show they met last April and also exchanged phone calls.

In one post, Kane said Chart Your Course was a failure, saying it was time for a new pedagogical approach focusing on classical education and great books.

“The main weakness of NCF (and most other colleges) is their inability to prepare students for life in the modern world. They graduate without being able to create or do anything of value, anything that anyone else is willing to pay for. Are the students to blame? No! NCF is at fault,” Kane wrote in his proposal. “We have a responsibility to ensure that every student who graduates has the opportunity to do something of value, measured by the wages offered by their fellow citizens.”

Kane also argued that there should be “no lectures” at New College; instead, classes should be discussion-focused, with teachers teaching multiple sections to keep class sizes small.

Some details of Kane’s proposal later appeared in NCF documents, such as the emphasis on “techne” – a phrase that appeared more than two dozen times in his message to Corcoran. But a careful examination of Kane’s proposal (and his external publications about NCF) shows that although administrators clearly accepted some of his concepts, New College did not pursue the radical changes he recommended. Instead, Corcoran and company appear to have drawn heavily from his ideas.

(Contacted Inside Higher EducationKane declined to discuss his exchange with Corcoran.)

Next to DeSantis at a press conference last May, Corcoran told local news outlets that the new core curriculum will not mean the end of individual college programs. But educators say that’s exactly what has happened: Opportunities for students have dwindled as administrators prepare to launch NCF’s new core curriculum next fall.

“For a small college like New College, which had a distinctive program and great flexibility and choice, now offers exactly the same limited curriculum, but even more limited than anywhere else in the Florida public university and college sphere – How are we different? – said the first anonymous teacher. “At this moment we are smaller, we have worse food, moldy dorms and the same classes as everywhere else, but with even fewer options. This limits access to knowledge and makes it extremely homogeneous, making it harder for colleges to differentiate themselves.”