Universities must periodically reconsider what every undergraduate should know because the world for which they are preparing students does not stand still. That is the purpose of a core curriculum: the small but important body of learning undertaken by every undergraduate, whether the student specializes in science, engineering, business, medicine, social sciences, art, or the humanities.
Unlike a major, which provides depth in a chosen discipline, the core develops the knowledge, habits of mind, and intellectual capacities that all graduates should share. It reflects a university’s judgment about what an educated person needs to understand the world, examine evidence, engage with unfamiliar perspectives, and exercise responsible citizenship.
Because it spans disciplines, the core curriculum is where a university can address major changes that no single profession or academic department can adequately address. Today, it needs to reflect the growing influence of technology, particularly artificial intelligence; mounting ecological constraints, including climate change and biodiversity loss; and the emergence of a more multipolar world.
Consider multipolarity and the curricular challenge it presents. Students need to understand not only that political and economic power is becoming more widely distributed, but also that the authority to define knowledge and to decide which ideas may be called “universal” is increasingly being contested.
For several centuries, European and, later, American institutions exercised enormous influence over the development of modern social sciences and the categories through which the world was studied. Concepts such as the nation-state, sovereignty, individual rights, markets, development, and international order emerged from particular historical experiences. Many contain insights of wide application and have traveled successfully beyond their places of origin. The difficulty arises when ideas rooted in one part of the world are assumed, without sufficient examination, to constitute universal knowledge. That assumption is increasingly being challenged as non-Western societies acquire greater confidence, intellectual capacity, and influence.
For example, Chinese scholars are debating how to construct a more autonomous system of knowledge about international relations. Their argument is not necessarily that Western theories are wrong. It is that international relations theory should not be treated as synonymous with Western international relations theory. This is a reasonable challenge. Western theories have often interpreted China through analogies drawn from European and American history. One assumption was that economic modernization would produce Western-style political systems. Another was that a rising China would behave like earlier European great powers and eventually seek military hegemony. Strong central government was interpreted principally as “the absence of individual liberty”, rather than as informed by Chinese historical experiences of unity, order, state capacity, and political legitimacy.
Such propositions may ultimately prove right or wrong. But students should learn to identify and examine the historical and cultural assumptions upon which they rest. Ideas emerging from every intellectual tradition must be examined with the same care. “Relationality”, for example, is an idea advanced by Chinese scholars. It starts from the proposition that people and states are not self-contained actors with identities and interests formed independently of others; their relationships also shape them. Like other influential concepts, relationality should be explored for both its distinctive origins and its wider relevance. The important question is not whether an idea is Chinese or Western, but what it helps us understand.
Although relationality draws substantially on Chinese intellectual traditions, it may offer insights transferable to other societies and contribute to a broader understanding of international relations. This is part of the continuing conversation between the universal and the particular. Some human problems are universal: Every society must create order, establish legitimacy, manage conflict, meet material needs, and relate to the natural world. But the institutional and moral responses to those problems need not be uniform.
Universities should equip students to navigate this complexity. The core curriculum is the obvious vehicle because it reaches across disciplines rather than confining these questions to students of politics, history, or international relations. The objective should not be a superficial tour of civilizations or the replacement of a Western canon with a Chinese, Indian, Islamic, or African one. It should be to develop what might be called intellectual multilingualism: the capacity to recognize, compare and critically evaluate different systems of thought.
Courses could be organized around common questions. What makes a government legitimate? What is the proper relationship between the individual and society? Is international order based principally on sovereign states, civilizations, relationships, or shared institutions? What constitutes development? How should humanity relate to nature and manage cultural and political differences?
Students could examine how different intellectual traditions approach the same problem, asking what each framework illuminates and what it obscures. They should also learn to distinguish between an analytical theory, a moral aspiration, and a political system’s preferred description of itself. This education must recognize both diversity within traditions and differences between them. There is no single Western view, just as there is no single Chinese view. Intellectual traditions contain internal disagreements, revisions, and challenges. Teaching them as fixed civilizational positions would reinforce stereotypes rather than expand understanding.
Scientific and technological education makes this need more pressing, not less. Engineers designing infrastructure, financiers allocating capital, and scientists testing models all make choices with social, ecological and political consequences. Technical competence without an understanding of diverse values and historical experiences will be inadequate in a world that requires cooperation across political and cultural systems. A good core curriculum cannot anticipate every issue graduates will encounter. It can teach them to approach unfamiliar ideas without instinctively rejecting or uncritically accepting them.
Universities should always prepare students for the world they are entering. That world is now technologically transformed, intellectually multipolar, and ecologically constrained. Every graduate should understand the natural systems upon which human life depends and possess the intellectual range to engage seriously with people who see the world through a different conceptual lens. These are no longer optional elements of a broad education but essential capabilities of an educated person in this century.
The author is chief development strategist of the Institute for the Environment, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
