Noting that higher education across the centuries has constituted a continuing dialogue between the minds of ancestors and of contemporaries, this paper traces the history of the common or core curriculum at the university level and warns against the current state of affairs. The paper proposes that a pedagogy is needed that can both discern and propagate, and affirm and hold together a community of ideas. It suggests that without this core, humans will be losing their most valued heritage--their collective memory. This historical account of the core curriculum is begun with examples from United States institutions of higher learning, with emphasis on the curriculum begun at Harvard in the 1630s, and continues through the presidency of Charles W. Eliot in 1869, the statement on general education in 1945, and the 1978 report on the core curriculum. In the paper, the differences in what was and is now considered core curriculum are discussed and the trend to more science courses and specialized electives in literature at the expense of classical humanities courses is protested. (MKM)