If common goals and common values are essential to a learning community, so, too, are common knowledge and common skills. To put such knowledge and skills in the hands of every student is one purpose of the general education curriculum at SUNY Geneseo.

The Geneseo community finds its center in the particular kind of learning defined by the term "liberal arts." Traditionally the possession of a free person, a liberal education is also preparation for citizenship in a free society. The citizens of a free society must make choices. Some of these choices are personal, principally affecting the chooser. Others, because they are political, have a much broader impact. The voter who pulls the voting booth lever, freely choosing a candidate or a proposition, chooses not only for him- or herself but for every member of the political community. To equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to make such choices wisely, to prepare them for life in the community beyond Geneseo, is another purpose of Geneseo's general education curriculum.

¶ To make wise choices on issues that bear on the environment, on public health, on technology, citizens need a basic understanding of knowledge and methods in the natural sciences and mathematics.

¶ To make wise choices on issues that bear on crime and punishment, on wealth and poverty, on justice, on equality, on diversity, on international relations, citizens need a basic understanding of knowledge and methods in the social sciences.

¶ To make wise choices on issues that bear on public art, on education, on freedom of expression and community standards, citizens need a basic understanding of knowledge and methods in the arts and literature.

¶ To make wise choices on issues that bear on their country's relation to the rest of the world, citizens need to know something about their country's history on the world stage, and something, too, about cultures and languages other than their own.

¶ To make wise choices on any of these issues, citizens need to be able to think logically and critically, and they need a broad historical and cultural perspective, including knowledge of the writers and other thinkers who have shaped past history and culture.

Freedom to choose is one kind of freedom; freedom from prejudice and cant, from narrow orthodoxy and manufactured opinion, is another. A liberal education has the power to liberate its possessor from what the poet William Blake called "mind forg'd manacles" by developing the habit of independent thought. And this is only one of many ways that a liberal education prepares students not only for responsible membership in a community but for a full and rewarding inner life. Geneseo's general education curriculum insures that every student, whether majoring in physics or art studio, business administration or computer science. will acquire knowledge and skills that enrich the self.

Finally, the same knowledge and skills that form a path for self-development and a preparation for citizenship also provide a solid foundation for academic specialization and invaluable flexibility for the ever-changing world of careers.

The requirements that constitute Geneseo's general education curriculum allow for many individual choices. Students select two Natural Science courses from a list that ranges from Geological Science to the Science of Sound to Human Biology. Their choices for the two required courses in Fine Arts and Social Science and the one required course each in Non-Western Traditions, U.S. History, and Numeric/Symbolic Reasoning are equally broad. For language proficiency, their choices include but also extend beyond French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Though all first year students take Intd 105, a small-group seminar in Critical Writing and Reading, they may choose from sections offered by departments across campus. The required two-course sequence in Western Humanities is offered by faculty in Philosophy, English, History, Foreign Language, and Education, and while all sections read some common texts and cover common themes and periods, each incorporates many selections of the professor's choosing.

Please explore the information that this site provides on the structure of the general education curriculum, the intended learning outcomes of particular general education areas, the assessment of these outcomes, and the relationship between Geneseo's general education curriculum and the SUNY System general education program. Send questions and comments to gened@geneseo.edu.

Site last modified on June 26, 2006