Social Science in the Core Curriculum
by David Foster
Social Science is the study of how and why human beings live together. Amid the variety, complexity, and continual flux of human affairs, social scientists not only describe and analyze particular societies, but also seek for a general account of the human attempt to live together in communities. Thus, at the broadest level, social science courses in the Core Curriculum should teach students how to observe, analyze, and interpret our life in communities.
Although social scientists begin with and continually return to the actual experience of living together, they do more than articulate the diversity and complexity of human communities. For to explain why a community has the particular character it does, one must identify and describe the forces, needs, and desires which bring human beings together and then explain how these things account for all the various forms of life in common, whether it be the family, tribe, city, religion, nation-state or empire. In addition, when various forms of social order occur together one must explain their relation to one another. It is often a question, for example, whether the character of a society is determined more by its religious beliefs, its economic basis, or its distribution of political power. In carrying out this attempt to account for the different forms of social order and their relation to one another, social scientists may take into account individual psychology, family relations, religious beliefs, geography, economics, political structures, military technology, architecture, climate—in short, anything and everything that influences collective life. While each of these subjects is a valuable study in itself, in the Core Curriculum they should be studied for the light they shed on the human experience of social life.
Awareness that there are different ways of ordering society leads naturally to the question of which social order is best. The quest for an answer to this question is the highest theme of social science; for it is only with knowledge of the best society that we can understand and adequately evaluate the variety of actual societies. In addition, all human beings and the societies they form make judgments of value, and no study of them can avoid an examination of this fact. But here we become aware of the essentially controversial character of social science. Reflecting life itself, there are profound disputes among social scientists over which social order is best. There are even serious disagreements over the proper standard for evaluating societies and over the correct method for examining and interpreting social life. An undergraduate education cannot resolve these massive issues, but it can help students begin to think clearly about them. The best way to do this as part of the Core Curriculum is to focus on the books that most compellingly articulate the large questions raised by social life and which most deeply reflect on the main alternative answers that have been offered to those questions. Students who genuinely understand several conflicting but mutually challenging answers to a fundamental question are well prepared to understand that question and to begin thinking for themselves about it.
This focus on fundamental questions and the books that treat them is particularly important regarding method. At present, a quantitative approach predominates in the social sciences. But in the context of the Core Curriculum, we should not attempt to teach the skills necessary for this kind of research. Our aim is rather to investigate the assumptions embedded in this particular approach, and to think about why it may be necessary and about its advantages and disadvantages relative to other approaches. Our goal is not to train specialists in a particular skill but to enliven minds with the capacity to think seriously about themselves and what they are doing. Sustained reflection on the most important questions of human society is the best way to do this.
The study of the social sciences is both valuable in itself and useful. Students equipped with an understanding of the great questions and the most compelling answers they have received have the background critically to examine and understand both their own society and any other society they may need to examine in the future. Because they are practiced at considering the implications of answering complex questions in different ways, this approach also prepares them prudently to consider the complex social and political questions they may face as citizens. Above all, this approach is part of what defines a liberally educated person. Honestly grappling with opinions that fundamentally differ from one's own challenges one to re-examine habitual opinions and assumptions, and this is the first step towards possessing a free mind.
David Foster is an Associate Professor of Political Science and the Chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at Ashland University.