Core Curriculum

Common Core

The four Common Core courses will provide Lingnan undergraduates with a fundamental and indispensable knowledge base and help students develop sound judgment, critical discernment and analytical abilities. Such a model will ensure a common experience and access to courses that are essential and would offer a firm intellectual foundation for Lingnan students. Students will learn how to think critically and tackle social, cultural, moral and ethical problems rationally. Equipped with a proper understanding of Hong Kong, other cultures and civilisations, students will be better prepared to become future leaders of our increasingly globalised city. The knowledge acquired in these studies will enable our students to think, judge, care and, ultimately, act responsibly in this ever-changing world.

Logic and Critical Thinking (邏輯與批判性思維)

The primary aim of this course is to teach students the basic but essential skills of analyzing, evaluation, and constructing arguments, and to hone their ability to execute these skills in thinking and writing. This ability is not only necessary for their future coursework, but also crucial to rational deliberation and action in everyday life. This course is distinguished by its effort to make explicit the basic methods of critical thinking and to link these methods to various issues and situations in life.

In order to fulfil its primary aim, the course will discuss common fallacies in reasoning, some of the most useful notions and methods of deductive logic, basic elements of probability and statistics, causal reasoning, and theories of decision-making. Every care will be taken to make the course material accessible and interesting to students. The relevance of the course material to real life will be highlighted and demonstrated through a variety of examples.

The Making of Hong Kong (香港社會)

This inter-disciplinary course introduces students to essential facts and knowledge on the nature of society, politics, economy and business in contemporary Hong Kong. Through historical and comparative perspectives, students will be able to develop local as well as global perspectives on Hong Kong society, and will consider implications for future policy and practice.

Understanding Morality (認識道德)

Ethics is a field of study that concerns the question of how one should act in a given situation: what is right and wrong, what is morally good or evil? In a wider sense, ethics seeks to answer the question first posed by Socrates, how may we live the good life? This course will provide a comprehensive and balanced introduction to the field of normative ethics. In this course, students are called upon to examine and reflect upon some of the most central questions in moral philosophy, such as the following: What are the major ethical theories, and how can they relate to the varied kinds of moral problems that confront us all? What does it mean to live a moral life? Is there one universal moral theory or are morals specific to particular groups, historical periods, or individuals? What makes an action right or wrong? Is that question answered in terms of pleasure or some other consequences actions have? In this course, much attention will be paid to finding a critical and rational approach to a wider understanding of human values, as well as a tolerance for different viewpoints. As such this course also tackles a range of specific moral problems including questions of political equality, biomedical controversies, war, environmental concerns, sexual morality and a range of topics relating to business ethics.

World History and Civilisations (世界歷史與文明)

This course will provide an overview of world history since the thirteenth century. It will focus primarily on ways in which different civilizations or cultures have interacted with each other. Such interactions include borrowings of ideas, cultural practices and political institutions; immigration, exploration and trade; the movements of disease; and empire-building. In addition, this course will highlight the ways in which societies have adapted to—and shaped—technological change.

November 2010