“You can take broad surveys or more specialized courses on particular time periods or themes,” Einhorn said. “Every Cal student knows this, and anyone else can also know by checking the catalogs, helpfully available online.”

http://www.dailycal.org/2012/04/02/santorum-makes-false-claims-about-californias-college-curriculum/

Please note that the criticism from the right is NOT that you're not required to take these classes, but rather that they don't have to be America specific classes. Again that's because the curriculum is open ended.

This is the study to which Santorum is referring

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/330353-a-crisis-of-competence.html

Ahh, thank you Mouzer for the links to the articles referenced. Your posts are always great for information. :) Absolutely agree with your words.

As for my own couple of cents on the topic; It's still implied he stands by how he felt about what he said, just the words were "wrong". I do believe if not for Rachel, and a couple of others, calling him out about it that it would of gone unchecked and more Republicans would believe all schools have stopped teaching anything about our country.

Hey Mouzer, thanks for the link! I just love reading the actual source material these ideas come from. Here's an ACTUAL complaint about "leftist" leanings at UC Berkeley from page 30 (p35 of the pdf). "At UC Berkeley, the mission statement of the Social Work department includes a statement that students must be committed to "advancing social justice." This phrase embodies more than just a vague admonition to do good: it has a specific place in left politics."

Seriously. There's a few problems with JUST this part of the document. Ready? There is NO "School of Social Work" at Berkeley. They have a "School of Social Welfare" and the phrase posted above appears nowhere in their mission statement. It reads:

Located within the world's finest public university and one of the most diverse regions in the nation, the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare strives to transform the systems that perpetuate poverty and social disadvantage by:

• Developing effective leaders and scholars committed to solving complex social problems;
• Producing, disseminating and utilizing research to improve social service delivery and policy through critical thinking and evidence-based knowledge;
• Preparing the next generation of culturally-competent social workers, researchers and teachers dedicated to serving the most vulnerable members of our society.

That's the whole thing. Since the report was released in April, and the mission statement is viewable online, I wonder how they could have made this error. So the report's writers created an imaginary school, gave it an imaginary mission statement, and then used THAT statement to make a poorly crafted argument - as the goal of ALL social work is "advancing social justice" and so any person seeking a career in the field should have that concern - or ought not pursue that education in the first place. Basically, if you're entering social work as a career path, you probably are already leaning left.

I found that just skimming through the document. I can only imagine what other gems of foolishness it contains.

@The Mouzer,

Great post.

Santorum sounded like the early stages of Alzheimer's when he said California schools don't offer history.

I had more than one history class in high school and didn't need any more for an engineering degree.

The humanities I took at Cal Poly included Future Studies.

• Club of Rome
• Limits to Growth

The essence of the warning from The Club of Rome remains valid. First, there is more to the warning than just a drop in commodity prices. The drop in the prices of oil and other commodities is more indicative of their reduced demand, rather than an indication that people are making do for longer with less. Their demand will be increased when, for example, the Asian recession ends, and so the price will again increase.

This is better than history in some ways.

I should address something I did not address in my original post (forgive me I was in a wee bit of a rush).

The issue of whether or not Western Civilization is taught is not the crux of the argument he is presenting. His premise is that history (w/ regards to the US and what prominent US ideologies stem from) is not required to be taken in order to graduate at all 9 campuses and then he provides proof of his premise by stating that 7 out of 9 don't even offer a course of Western Civilization or require it for studying. Now this is a. not true (as others have pointed out), but b. as I stated above (and the point I was trying to get at) this is because they have an open ended curriculum.

As far as I know the curriculum has always been open ended. Maybe it wasn't back 100 years ago or however long the UC system has been in existence, but as long as I've been alive they do not (usually) require you to take any one particular class for your basic studies (math, science, humanities, art, etc) unless it's degree specific. What they usually do is they state you need, as an example, 3 credits from this category and then list what classes you can take that would meet that credit requirement. You, the student, are then allowed to choose from those classes. I have never even heard of (nor have I personally attended) a college not giving you open ended decision making unless it was degree specific.

And even degree specific courses usually allow you some flexibility, especially if your degree has an area of concentration. For instance if you go to school for chemistry your school may allow you to concentrate on forensic chemistry or pharmaceutical studies. Obviously a person wanting to work as a forensic criminal investigator is not necessarily going to have to know the same information as a person hoping to attend pharmacy school after they attain their undergraduates in chemistry. So usually they allow some flexibility in the upper classes (it's usually not as flexible as the lower classes, but there's still at least some wiggle room).

But, anyways, I apologize for not also addressing the issue of whether or not western civilization courses were available in the UC system. Props to those of you who did address that. We've pretty much- as a collective body- thoroughly debunked this bull@!$%# ;-)

Why would anyone study the United States and not Canada when an American study says this:

OTTAWA, Canada — If there’s one thing we Canadians relish it’s a chance to tout our superiority over Americans.

This national trait is perhaps only exceeded by our propensity to wallow in feelings of inferiority. In the past few years, for instance, we’ve tended to go on about how Toronto’s banking sector held up nicely when Wall Street melted down in 2008.

But that one’s getting a bit old, so we welcome the opportunity this week, on the 30th anniversary of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to boast, instead, of constitutional superiority. Two US scholars, politics professor David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia law school, offer us timely cover for our smugness.

Their widely noted recent study, “The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution,” published in the New York University Law Review, tracks the rising prestige of Canada’s 1982 constitutional reforms in, among other places, South Africa, Israel, New Zealand and Hong Kong, as the US model’s longstanding luster fades.

(They describe the reputation of the US Constitution as being in "free fall")

When the California University "thing" was first mentioned, I

thought it couldn't be the UC system, but it might be the State

University system. (San Francisco State University, San Diego State University,

etc., etc.)

I doubt that these two would be guilty of not offering necessary courses,

but it's possible that one or two of the smaller ones might be.

Now that Mr. Santorum has revoked his statement, the point it moot.

@ John Murphy ... where does that hideous quote come from?

Two US scholars, politics professor David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia law school, published in the New York University Law Review.

And of course we Canadians know that we lead the United States in every way that really counts and have for at least 30 years, if not more. That's a given.

Ah, I thought it sounded more like an American speaking "on behalf of" Canadians, than an actual Canadian. While I would agree that we lead the USA in all the really good ways, we are usually much more polite and circumspect about it! :-)

I remember when the United States was respected to some degree, back in the 50's when I was growing up. I learned better in the 60s from all the draft dodgers I went to university with.

Another article on the same subject:

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the nation's fundamental legal framework has emerged as the No. 1 constitutional model for the world, according to a new American study that also tracks the "free-fall" decline of the U.S. Constitution as a template for other countries.

Legal scholar David S. Law, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and University of Virginia law professor Mila Versteeg used a mathematical approach in assessing the relative global influence of various nations' constitutions.

They determined Canada has a greater claim than any other country to have displaced the U.S. as the world's "constitutional superpower."

The study, to be published in June in the New York University Law Review, recently prompted a front-page story in the New York Times -- headlined " 'We the People' loses followers" -- that lamented the waning international influence of the U.S. Constitution.

"Constitutional drafters rarely invent new forms of political organization or discover new rights from whole cloth, but instead lean heavily upon foreign examples for inspiration," the authors state in the paper.

"The fact that the U.S. Constitution no longer serves as the primary source of inspiration for constitution-making in other nations thus begs the question of what, if anything, has emerged to take its place," they write.

"One possible heir to the throne also happens to be America's closest neighbour.

"The Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms has often been described as more consistent with, and more influential upon, prevailing global standards and practices than the U.S. Constitution."

Having crunched the numbers, Law and Versteeg conclude: "The data suggest that the answer may be yes. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Canadian Constitution is increasingly in sync with global constitutionalism."

Law explained to Postmedia News that each of the provisions within the constitutions of "all of the so-called constitutional leaders" -- the U.S., Germany, India, South Africa and Canada -- were "turned into a series of numbers" to enable comparisons with the dozens of constitutions drafted in other countries around the world since the Second World War.

The idea was to compare the degree to which certain rights -- such as freedom of speech, provisions protecting minority languages and the right to bear arms -- were shared by other nations as they created or amended their constitutions over the past 65 years.

For comparative purposes, the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights -- though not a full-fledged constitutional document like the Charter -- was included in the study.

"Once you turn every constitution into a series of numbers, you can numerically compare the similarity of any two constitutions," said Law. "And there was a unique pattern on the part of Canada."

When the Charter was adopted in 1982, the degree of similarity between Canada's Constitution and those of other countries "nosedived," said Law.

"As soon as the Charter is adopted, the Canadian Constitution shifts out of the global mainstream," he explained.

But then, by the late 1980s, the Law-Versteeg analysis shows other countries moving "with a vengeance" to match Canada's constitution.

"What this strongly implies is that whatever Canada did in writing the Charter," said Law, meant that "other countries are imitating the Charter" or that Canada's constitution-makers in the early 1980s "did an excellent job of anticipating global trends."

In February, during a television interview in Egypt about that country's ongoing political revolution, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sparked controversy back home by proposing Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms or South Africa's new constitution -- widely known to have also been inspired by Canada's 1982 reforms -- as a good model for Egyptian lawmakers.

"I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012," said Bader Ginsburg.

UKLD: Santorum said those studies were not offered. The fact is they are not necessarily REQUIRED, but they are offered.

Forgive me. Mary, perhaps it's just my British perspective, but I really don't actually think that those two things (a course in American History, and a 'survey course' in Western Civilisation) are even remotely similar, and I presumed that the sarcasm was evident in my phrasing.

Hey, UKLD :D
I read that tone! I read it from all the way over on the far west U.S. coast! Not to worry, you used your punctuation, and it flew right across.

Omar's first post in over five years.

You think? By Republican tradition, the runner up for the nomination in one cycle is the default nominee in the next. McCain was the 'also-ran' in 2000 and the nominee in 2008. Romney was the 'also-ran' and 2008 and he's the nominee in 2012. Santorum was the 'also-ran' in 2012 and...

Why would this even matter there Ricky, everyone knows (thanks to you) that college is just for "snobs" anyway. Issuing this tepidly vague obfuscating apology is hardly sufficient either. I doubt that the people who heard this lie are TRMS viewers, so they're still out there believing your lie. Unfortunately you were up against Romney the liar extraordinaire; he's still pushing that 8% unemployment falsehood.

"We [Obama and Romney] both have degrees from Harvard. I have one, he has two. What a snob.”

True, but the fact is that UC campuses are so impacted that to provide additional classes outside of core classes is difficult at best. Many students who participate in the system complete their first two years in local junior colleges. Here's a link to Long Beach City College's fall class schedule for history. Note ALL the classes! LBCC has a GREAT history program!
http://schedule.lbcc.edu/scheduledetailnew.cfm?descr=HISTORY%20%28HIST%29&subject=HIST&term=1475&semester=Spring&campus=

Part of what Santorum isn't disclosing is simply the fact that the UC schools are treated as mainly upper level and graduate study schools, with fewer freshman and sophomore level classes made available. This has been true for decades in California, and has to do not only with a dense local population, but also with out-of-state and international interest in the school system.

Currently, thanks to federal budget cuts, there's a major argument going on. For the past few years, in-state student registration levels have been kept static while oos and int. registration levels (which garner higher fees) have steadily increased. Those students ALSO try to go to junior colleges in their home states or countries before transferring in to the more expensive UC system, so UC doesn't offer the classes that they don't need or want. Here are the numbers. http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2012/fall_2012_admissions_table1.pdf

So, Santorum needs to be honest. Right now, what's REALLY going on with UC is that the GOP likes cutting school funding, and UC likes money. The two aren't compatible, and the only people suffering are Californian students who would pay in-state fees (which keep getting raised anyway) if they COULD get into school!

Reporter to Gandhi - "Sir, what do you think of Western civilization?"

Gandhi - "I think it would be a good idea."