CU:

Core Curriculum: Ideals and Values

(Revised 10/2009)

11. Ideals and Values (3 semester hours). Ideals and values have usually been determined by long-standing traditions and fixed social practices. In our modern world, the interaction of different cultures, movement from place to place, electronic media, and the rapidity of change, even within a given society, have combined to generate new constellations of ideals and hard choices among values.

Courses meeting the ideals and values requirement inquire into some specific sphere of human value (e.g. moral, religious, intellectual, aesthetic, environmental, etc.). In these courses students are encouraged to reflect upon fundamental ideals and values, their own and others, and the sources from which those value orientations derive. Such inquiry demands the development of the critical skills which help students identifying the assumptions and ramifications of value structures. It also requires consideration of approaches by which value systems are constructed, justified, and applied, especially in regard to the personal, societal, and in some cases cross-cultural contexts.

Students may complete this 3-hour requirement by passing any course listed below. Students who take approved CU-Boulder course work to fulfill this requirement must take the course for a letter grade and receive a passing grade of D- or higher.