Core

While I was thinking about the modern use of benchmark, I came to realize another horrible word that we are using more is core.

For example, we talk about the core curriculum of a medical school, or the core value of a declining city.

“That’s nothing wrong with emphasising the core value. We have to focus on critical elements of our society, or of our medical education.” You may say.

On that, my first response is such a belief represents an example of the classical trap in logics: The core value is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, for a people (or city or university or what not). Frequent visitors may recognize the line of thinking is the same as the brief discussion that I made a few months ago on the flaw of using a “minimal standard” marking scheme for clinical examination. (Please refer to http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2011/05/standard.html)

After all, the analogy is simple: The core is critically important for the subsistence of apple as a species of living organism – but not to everyone else.

And, when every animal is turning away from apples with only a core, the species would never prosper.