About the Core Curriculum

As a Jesuit educational institution, the goal of the Ateneo de Manila is the integral formation of persons of discernment and action. With Christ as the model and inspiration of what it means to be fully human, the aim of the University is to form leaders in service of the global and local community, especially the poor and marginalized -- professionals of conscience, competence, compassion, and commitment.
 
The Ateneo de Manila University’s core curriculum has been formally in place since the 1950s. After several modifications over the succeeding decades, and following a thorough review process, the Loyola Schools and the Board of Trustees approved a new core curriculum in 2016 to respond to contemporary challenges in the world and Philippine society. It was implemented beginning School Year 2018-2019.
 
The comprehensive educational reform in the country – through the K-12 basic education system and the revision of the CHED General Education (GE) curriculum—was an additional impetus for undertaking this major change. The challenge was to revise the core, in a manner that remained true to our Ateneo identity as a Filipino, Catholic, and Jesuit university, while incorporating the new General Education requirements of the CHED.
 
The world-affirming nature of Ignatian spirituality has translated over the years into the primacy of the liberal arts in Jesuit education that is found in the core curriculum. It is the hallmark of Ateneo education. A key feature of our core curriculum is its inner logic in the sequencing of the courses. Our students are not simply given a list of required courses for them to take whenever they wish to do so. The core curriculum strives for both academic competence and value formation through a deliberate progression of learning.
 
Thus the core curriculum courses are organized under four stages:
 
1) Foundations: Exploring and Equipping the Self
2) Rootedness: Investigating and Knowing the World
3) Deepening: Defining the Self in the World, and
4) Leadership: Engaging and Transforming the World
 
Our students start from foundational courses that are meant to sharpen their language and communication skills and equip them with basic scientific and mathematical tools. Courses which explore faith and spirituality, and facilitate self-understanding, prepare students for investigating and knowing the world, and defining the self in the world –  bringing them to a readiness to discern life-options and make life-choices. Our hope is that they will become leaders who will engage the world and commit themselves to using their competences to work for social transformation, rooted in a mature Christian faith.