Higher education's most vibrant and contentious issues—common and specialized learning in the curriculum, conceptions of general and liberal education, the design of common core sequences, the merits of classic texts and contemporary research, Western and non-Western course materials, the place of undergraduate teaching in scholarly careers—have for decades been debated by the faculty of the College of the University of Chicago. At the College, they have become embodied in educational programs of sufficient historical depth to reveal patterns of intellectual and pedagogical continuity amidst changing social and institutional circumstances.

Social Science 2 holds the place of honor among these educational projects. For more than half a century, Soc 2 has been one of the most influential courses in American undergraduate education. This unique, year-long course, the oldest and most distinguished of its kind at any American university, has served as an ongoing experiment in how the social sciences can be taught and learned in the general education context.

In this collection John MacAloon has gathered essays by fourteen eminent social scientists—such as David Riesman, Michael Schudson, and F. Champion Ward—who as either teachers or students were profoundly shaped by Soc 2. Their multifarious and selective memories—full of dissonances and harmonies of recollection, judgment, and voice—create a compelling biography of a course and a college that have survived tumultous change through sustained and committed argument.

This book will be of great interest to anyone interested not only in the theory but the practice of higher education.

Written by members of the faculty at the College of the University of Chicago, this book provides a comprehensive account of one of the most significant and successful experiments in the field of education. In 1931, the faculty undertook to determine the essentials of a general education and to devise an integrated system of essential courses that students were required to take. This book discusses that innovative curriculum and method, and includes reading lists and sample examinations. Levine's new Preface discusses the endurance of and excitement surrounding the program created during the Hutchins years.