On The Curriculum Setting And Enlightenment Of General Education In Columbia University In The City Of New York

The competition of higher education among countries in the world lies in the talents contest,the need of domestic higher education reform and the trend of global higher education development call for China’s in-depth development of general education in colleges and universities.General education is a kind of broad,not professional,not utilitarian education.The purpose of general education is to cultivate people who can actively participate in social life,have social responsibility,have the comprehensive development.General curriculum is short for general education courses,it is the concentrated reflection of general education concept,and directly serves for the general education.The study on general curriculum will help us do better in cultivating all-round development people in the general education practice and improve the quality of talent cultivation in colleges and universities.Columbia University’s general curriculum setting has experienced three phases:King’s college,Columbia college,Columbia University.From prototype to final maturity.People view the religious courses as the center at the beginning,as time goes by,the curriculum setting becomes diversified and the content of the curriculum become more complete.Columbia University’s general curriculum system includes its curriculum setting concept,principles,goals and areas.The factors that influences the curriculum setting concept,including the needs of the society,the teaching concept of the headmaster,teachers’ involved and the students’ needs.At the same time,the change of the setting concept has experienced the joining together of religious and secular,dominated by practical subjects,cultivating comprehensive people.The principle of general curriculum has four aspects:basic,comprehensice,timely,prefounding.The goals of general curriculum include cultivate reasonable "person" or "citizen",lead the students to have a wide range of knowledge and cultivate students’ability of solving problems.Columbia University’s general curriculum areas,incluing contemporary civilization,literature humanities,university writing,art humanities,music humanities,frontier of science,science requirement,global core requirement,foreign language requirement,physical education requirement,etc.Columbia University’s general curriculum features,including insist on the core curriculum,small class teaching mode,provide various content,the organic-integrated curriculum schedule.It can be concluded some relevant enlightenment for China’s colleges and universities:the governor must have a clear understanding of the nature of general education;teachers have to strengthen the competence of teaching the general curriculum;the officers need to carry out diversified courses in the process of achieving objective;schools need to create a strong cultural atmosphere in promoting the general curriculum.