The question we should ask ourselves in examining the current curriculum is simple: What do we value in education? Like most students at Amherst, I was attracted by the College's open curriculum when I was looking at schools. I thought that the flexibility of choosing my own courses would allow me to study what I wanted to study and learn what I wanted to learn. In some ways, I have enjoyed the freedom of this education system, but I believe that on the whole, the open curriculum hinders rather than fosters intellectual development. I have come to view the open curriculum as symptomatic of a growing trend towards specialization in American universities that tends to lead to a certain narrow-mindedness among students.

The appeal of the open curriculum is that each student, motivated by his or her own academic desires, can navigate the education system in pursuit of knowledge and intellectual goals. The problem with the system is that students typically use this freedom to focus on very specific and refined subjects without the contextual information that allows them to fully understand them. It is not that they confine themselves to one particular field or subject of interest, but that in each area that they wish to study, they go only so far as the parameters of the course require them. For instance, a student might decide to take a Russian history course on the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 without having any idea about the broad trends of Russian history, current European or world history. I don't see any problem with this particular course, but what I do find problematic is that the student often feels no obligation to research these contextual currents because the open curriculum system never asks for context or continuity in the student's education. Each course syllabus defines the limits not only of what a student is required to know but of what a student is expected to know. The pockets of information a student receives in each course remain unconnected and unincorporated into a larger framework. Ideally, students would seek to correlate these various pockets of knowledge, but I have found that in the absence of an institutional structure to facilitate the process, this integration rarely takes place.

I do not believe that Amherst should impose a core curriculum on all students. The abundance of information and academic fields that exist in our current world has turned the broad scholar, in all but the most exceptional cases, into the dilettante. There is no room nowadays for Cardinal Newman's 19th century ideals of the liberal arts education. What I am proposing instead is that major-related requirements, which are currently in place in several departments (most of which are in the sciences), be spread to all departments on campus. If it is no longer plausible to expect from a student a holistic knowledge of the liberal arts, at least we should strive for a broader knowledge of the field we have selected as our major. I don't think that this would significantly limit our freedom to select advanced courses in other fields; I am talking about five or six required courses (eight or 10 for the double major) out of 32 courses. Nor am I asking for a syllabus of Arnold's "touchstone" texts; I think that in each discipline, requirements should outline broad periods and movements through various and variegated texts, classics and exceptions, canonical and marginal works. The idea would be to provide a foundation, a launching point, for more in-depth research in specialized areas. Amherst has a world-class faculty with a multitude of interests and bodies of knowledge. I don't believe students should miss out on the specialized information that our professors have to offer, but I do believe they should first have the literary, historical and/or political context to fully understand the materials they are studying.

Studying abroad at the University of the Republic of Uruguay this semester has profoundly influenced the way I view education. It was only after experiencing a different didactic and educational structure and interacting with my fellow classmates that I began to feel that there were serious deficiencies in American higher education. I think that the open curriculum is only one symptom of a growing problem in colleges and universities. That is not to say the education at the School of Humanities in Uruguay is perfect, and in fact, the first contact with Latin American education can be quite shocking. The most qualified professors in the country scrape by on appallingly low salaries, the library doesn't have funds for new books, and the physical edifice of the school is literally crumbling down. The professors occupy a somewhat tragic position in Uruguayan society, not only because they are underpaid but also because their research is often destined to reach only as far as the River Plate region of South America.

But the education here in Uruguay has an amazing way of transcending the physical environment. In what I would attribute partially to the system of major requirements in which students must take approximately six required courses within their carrera (what is roughly equivalent to a major), students are provided with a solid academic base before they begin to take elective courses. Perhaps because of the danger of falling into regionalism or provincialism, classroom discussions are associative, global and panoramic. For example, in the opinion of my Latin American literature professor, a discussion of Borges is not only incomplete without references to the Argentine literary critic Beatriz Sarlo, but also without references to the 19th century gauchesco poet José Hernandez, Poe, Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Paul de Mann. There is a heavy emphasis on describing literary, historical and cultural milieus, and while the whirlwind of names, dates and titles can sometimes be overwhelming, on the whole this pedagogical method provides students with contextual information that we simply do not get in the United States. I think that lectures and discussions would benefit from the close textual analysis typical in American universities, just as American universities would benefit from the associative aspect of education here. The bulk of my frustration stems from the fact that I have enjoyed so many of my classes at Amherst while simultaneously feeling that a broad structure to incorporate and supplement that knowledge is lacking.

I often fantasize-the word is only a bit too strong-of a school with the resources, the diverse and brilliant faculty and the physical infrastructure of Amherst, combined with the course syllabi, the contextual lectures and the curricular infrastructure of the University of the Republic of Uruguay. At Amherst we have the capability to at least partly realize this fusion if small institutional changes are made. I understand that I am expounding a personal educational philosophy that might not be in sync with the ideas of many students and faculty members. I think that the Committee on Academic Priorities is a step in the right direction, and I ask only that as the process continues, the students and faculty-especially those who have had contact with other educational systems-continue to propose new ideas and think dynamically about the Amherst curriculum and its future.

Lawrence can be reached at jtlawrence@amherst.edu