Let a Couple Dozen Flowers Bloom

Kevin Carey manages to spin a trip to a Canadian music store into an extremely long analogy in favor of more heavy-handed curricular guidance on the part of college administrators:

This doesn't mean every student needs exactly the same core curriculum, like some kind of rote march from Revolver to Never Mind the Bollocks to Nevermind. But it does mean that universities need to do a better job of applying some degree of judgment and taste in working with their students to decide what they need to learn. Otherwise, they may end up like Tower Records, while the little CD store up the street thrives in selling the intellectual taste that, more than anything, students really need.

[The point here being that the giant store-full-of-music model was rendered obsolete by the internet, but smaller stores where the staff can offer you judgment and insight still have value]

I've always found these kind of arguments about strict core requirements, laxer ones, etc. to be a bit puzzling. There probably isn't a unique best way to handle this. Which is why it's fortunate that even if you restrict your attention to the relatively small set of elite colleges and universities there are still a whole bunch of 'em. It seems to me that there's a set of defensible approaches to the issue (including no requirements whatsoever) and it's good for some colleges to adopt each of them. I worry that pressure on each individual school to strike the "correct" balance leads ultimately to a kind of bland uniform compromise that serves no good purpose.

Comments

I worry that pressure on each individual school to strike the "correct" balance leads ultimately to a kind of bland uniform compromise that serves no good purpose.

You worry about this? Seriously?

Dude, you're out of college. You won't ever be an undergraduate again. Relax. Worry about other things.

Posted by Ryan | May 31, 2007 5:46 PM

I find this type of stuff to be more than a bit patronizing. I went to a school with distribution requirements which meant that a poli sci/history type such as myself had to shop around to find a couple of science/math classes that someone as deficient as me in these areas could do reasonably well in. Frankly it was a waste of my time and education dollar. What I learned was to find the bullshit course that wouldn't harm my GPA too much.

Does everyone really have to read the Western canon or solve calculus equations to be well educated? Not to sound cretinous, but I don't think so. I limped through enough of the required Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, et al to get through, but frankly found all of it to be rather close to unreadable.

25 years after leaving college I remain an avid reader and I would like to think a reasonably well informed and cultured person. But I really hate the idea of someone wasting my time with classes of no interest to me when I could have been taking things that would have meant a lot to me.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 31, 2007 6:05 PM

(shrug) At the undergrad level, who cares? It's all idiot-level, and largely false (esp. in philosophy, where one is simply lied to about what a thinker thought).

Posted by sherifffruitfly | May 31, 2007 6:38 PM

I find this type of stuff to be more than a bit patronizing. I went to a school with distribution requirements which meant that a computer science/physics type such as myself had to shop around to find a couple of literature/history classes that someone as deficient as me in these areas could do reasonably well in. Frankly it was a waste of my time and education dollar. What I learned was to find the bullshit course that wouldn't harm my GPA too much.

Oh, excuse me, does that make me sound ignorant?

Does everyone really have to read the Western canon or solve calculus equations to be well educated?

Then what is well-educated, as opposed to well-trained?

Posted by Constantine | May 31, 2007 6:40 PM

Colleges offer a lot of internal diversity -- e.g., you can major in wildly different subjects -- but there is surprisingly little external diversity across colleges. There are a handful of radically different colleges, like the two St. John's with their Great Books programs. And then there are a few that look fairly normal but have heterodox philosophies, like Reed, which is socially far left, intellectually conservative, staunchly defends using the SAT, and flunks out lots of people.

But, in general, American colleges are deeply conformist. For example, how many colleges voluntarily don't use affirmative action? Cal Tech might be the only one. Conformism rules.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 31, 2007 6:51 PM

I'd highly recommend Tim Burke, who has some smart things to say on the topic:

http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=375

Posted by Chris C | May 31, 2007 7:31 PM

Something that has struck me repeatedly in the 30 years I've paid attention to colleges is how slowly good practices spread from one college to another. For example, Rice U. is ranked first by Princeton Review in Quality of Life in large part because of its "residential college system." Students there don't live in either fraternities or dormitories. Instead, they are randomly assigned for all four years to "residential colleges" which are a hybrid of the two -- each residential building has its own dining hall and social life is organized around the residential colleges. This provides much of the cohesiveness and sense of belonging of a fraternity without the exclusiveness and snobbery.

So, has this successful system spread nationally? Yeah, right ...

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 31, 2007 8:33 PM

Constantine,

I guess there is well educated in the Alan Bloom stick up your ass sense, and the possiblity that in fact there are intellects and writers in the last 100 or so years who may have more to say about our lives than Plato, Aristotle or some of the other canonical authors. I've read extensively from the works of writers like Kundera, Vargas Llosa, Roth, Camus, Havel, Hoeullbecq, Rushdie and thinkers like Rawls, Walzer, Foucault, Irving Howe and Michael Harrington over the years and I have to say I think this is something of an education.

I have a B.A. in Politics where I studied extensively in the areas of comparitive politics, peasant and millenialist movements, as well as good old American government, and a law degree (that swould be the training part).

My broader point was that I think college students should not all be forced into the same pigeonholes.

Posted by Klein's tiny left nut | May 31, 2007 10:26 PM

As a recent college graduate who suffered* through an art history class because he needed to fulfill a requirement, I am not entirely against the idea of certain requirements. I did learn a few things in the class, so I guess the point of the requirement was met, but at the same time, it was a gigantic pain in the ass to pick something. Between classes that I needed a prerequisite for, classes that wouldn't fit into my schedule, and ones that were truly obscure, I was left with something that I didn't really want. If my school had done a better job of offering something more general and more accessible to students, it would have been a lot better for many people.

*A decent amount of the suffering was inflicted on me, by me. If I had known what an art history class was like, I would have taken some random Chinese literature class, pulled a few all-nighters in the library writing papers, and been done with it. Instead, I made my last semester much more difficult than it needed to be. Oh well...

Posted by Brian | June 1, 2007 12:44 AM

Then what is well-educated, as opposed to well-trained?

I think this is a critical question, and that it doesn't have anything to do with universities pigeon-holing students. It's a matter of giving students a sound background in the basics so that they can understand more advanced material in an appropriate context. For example, how common is it to run into someone on the Internet who thinks Ayn Rand is the last word (not to mention the first word) on philosophy? More common than it should be. It's easier to see the need for the basics in the sciences and engineering, but I think it's also reasonable to expect well-educated people to have a grasp of the building blocks of thought in the humanities and elsewhere.

Posted by RSA | June 1, 2007 9:05 AM

Scarily, I'm sorta with Constantine again. As a math/science enthusiast, I entered college with the desire to pursue training in those areas, while wasting as little of my time as possible on other disciplines. Unfortunately, a good scholarship suckered me into attending a college with a large core requirement. And I'm grateful. Nowadays, I seek out scholarship for its own sake, but as someone in their late teens primed with contempt for the "softer" disciplines, I really did have to be forced.

the possiblity that in fact there are intellects and writers in the last 100 or so years who may have more to say about our lives than Plato, Aristotle or some of the other canonical authors.

Yeah, but I wouldn't have bothered touching any of the authors you name if the pump hadn't been primed by exposure to a diversity of opinions and disciplines. And I think you might be confusing "core requirements" with "the Canon". I knew a biology major who fulfilled a requirement with a modern lit course; I just wanted to hear our poet-in-residence recite passages from the Aeneid. And based on your list, you'd probably have to be forced to read about the scientific thought that has had some effect on our lives in the last 100 or so years. Physics students aren't instructed from Aristotle anymore, you know. (Well, except at snooty reactionary St. John's.)

Now, I don't think everyone should be required to "solve calculus equations" or enroll in advanced econometrics. I think a poli sci / history major would be better served by exposure to mathematical logic, or, looking at our government, an innumeracy-avoidance course. Then again, my college didn't require calculus of anyone outside the mathematical and physical sciences, because it would have served no purpose beyond being difficult and boring.

It's true that a lot of these intro courses can be "bullshit" courses (back in my day, we used the term "gut") that grant an easy A. But courses for one's major are also often useless at best, or weed-out courses at worst. So what is the point of college, beyond certification? I bemoan the attitude of "Screw all that; just give me the degree" that appears when core requirements are brought up. Hey, why not just pay the full tuition up front and get the degree without even attending a college? From what I've seen, it wouldn't change the outcome of a Harvard undergraduate education very much. :-P Now all of you kids get off my lawn.

Posted by mds | June 1, 2007 9:11 AM

Shorter Klein: I didn't get what I wanted to out of the assigned readings, therefore there should be no core curriculum.

BTW, you can't much understand the recent authors you listed without some knowledge of those other ones you despise, not least because that's what those recent authors read.

I also can't believe you studied politics and trash reading Hegel.

Posted by nolaboyd | June 1, 2007 9:52 AM

Brian,

I made the same dreadful mistake by taking a survey art history course -- you know the one -- the slide shows from cave paintings to Jasper Johns -- which I had a habit of spacing out in or dosing off. The only damn C I ever got in college (I did manage to find the poet's math class -- based around the text Goedel Escher, Bach of all things and the ever popular astronomy to get me through the science/math requirement.)And you're right - the art history was a self inflicted wound prompted by laziness and a lack of imagination (although I was able to work in Marcel Duchamp's urinal reference at lunch the other day -- almost justified the course 27 years later). I should have taken Shakespeare, which I would have enjoyed.

My point was that notions of being "well educated" are both a tad subjective and do tend to involve this argument over the canon. I had to read both Plato and Aristotle in the basic philosophy and political theory classes and I must say, a little went a long way. I don't view them as the gateway to anything except intense boredom.

I also think there is something to be said for respecting the student as a consumer of some rather expensive courses and that some deference should be given to individual choice in these matters.

Ironically, I had an extremely impractical liberal arts education by choice and am rather viscerally opposed to the "training" model, i.e. majoring in business, pre-law, etc. But I don't know that I feel comfortable imposing my prejudice on others.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | June 1, 2007 9:57 AM

I went to a school with distribution requirements which meant that a poli sci/history type such as myself had to shop around to find a couple of science/math classes that someone as deficient as me in these areas could do reasonably well in. Frankly it was a waste of my time and education dollar. What I learned was to find the bullshit course that wouldn't harm my GPA too much.

Alternately, I sort of wish my college had had more strict cross-disciplinary requirements. I went to a school which, basically, divided up the curriculum into liberal arts, social sciences, and hard sciences, and required a major, minor or "cluster" (three or four specific classes with a common theme) in each of them. Since those are such broad themes, and there was a fair amount of variety in clusters, it gave students a lot of latitude. I pretty eagerly double-majored in English and political science and I have no regrets there, but I fulfilled my hard sciences requirement with a cluster of philosophy classes that kind of looked like mathematical logic if you squinted.

It's not that I couldn't have handled real math or science, I don't think. But in my freshman and early sophomore year I had less fond memories of math and science than of other classes, I wasn't that curious in those subjects just for the sake of learning and broadening my mind, and anyway, I thought what I was taking would be more like that than it turned out to be. By the time I realized my error (that is, by the time I grew more curious in that style of thinking and realized that what I was taking had less of it than I thought), it was too late to just swap one cluster for another without giving up something else I wanted.

Since then, I've kind of thought of auditing a calculus class at a local college or something. No big deal, it would be just for fun, and I'm not remotely interested in any career path that would require formal study like that. The point is, though, some distribution requirements do have good reasons behind them.

Posted by Cyrus | June 1, 2007 10:06 AM

Nolaboyd,

My suggestion was simply that one can learn more about life today reading a chapter of American Pastoral or Midnight's Children, Platform or The Book of Laughter and Forgetting than you are likely to glean from reading all of The Republic. I know this is viewed as blasphemy, but I just don't have the reverence for this material that others do. As for Hegel, it's like eating spinach doused in fish oil -- good for you I guess, but really hard going. (And in the end, interesting in a conceptual sense but wrong in the way that all of these great totalizing theories of politics and life, i.e. Marx, Freud, et al. are wrong. Not uninteresting, not without amazing descriptive power, not without some tremendous and incredibly influential insights, but empirically pretty much wrong.)

I was going to pick on Leviathan but I realize that if we give the GOP another decade or two in power, Hobbes will even be required reading in my eyes.

And I would have just been destroyed having to compete in a real live math or science class at my college. You've got to know your limitations in this world.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | June 1, 2007 10:38 AM

I went to a school with tons of cutthroat pre-meds and engineers, so that meant that non-science majors had no interest in taking hard science classes with them (bio, chem, physics). I had to know math for grad school-level economics, so that took up most of my math-science-engineering requirements, but I filled up the rest with a bullshit linguistics class that was a waste of time. The 1-credit theoretical physics class I took for two semesters was interesting and had no tests, yet I spent most of the lectures studying for other classes and tests that were more relevant to me.

Posted by Reality Man | June 1, 2007 11:29 AM

I went to a school with tons of cutthroat pre-meds and engineers, so that meant that non-science majors had no interest in taking hard science classes with them (bio, chem, physics).

Ditto here (at my college the weed-out course was organic chemistry--you did not want to go up against the pre-meds in what we called a "throat" course in those days).

Looking over the responses to Matt's post, I'm wondering if a reasonable solution would involve simply getting rid of easy courses that non-majors in that discipline can get an easy passing grade in. Of course, I say this after having found a meteorology course (i.e., "Weather") to fill out my general education requirements.

Posted by RSA | June 1, 2007 11:41 AM

Reality Man and RSA point out the same problem I was noting -- in an era where students are gunning for slots in medical schools and engineering programs many of us liberal arts waifs are just so much shark bait. I knew early on, by say junior year of high school, that I just didn't have those kind of math chops. Nor the desire to grind through a course and get a C.

But the weather class -- I like that. Everyone's an expert on weather. Did they have open ended essay questions like -- Hot enough for you? Explain.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | June 1, 2007 12:52 PM

Klein, I expect no reverence for the material, but as someone upstream said, you're talking about canon and not core. In other words, you seem to be objecting chiefly to what students are forced to study rather than that they are forced to study something. That's a fruitful discussion. But saying that a student knows best what will educate them (what interests me) before they are actually educated is just individualism gone awry.

Posted by nolaboyd | June 1, 2007 1:21 PM

in an era where students are gunning for slots in medical schools and engineering programs many of us liberal arts waifs are just so much shark bait.

As one who has TA'd undergraduate physics and interacted extensively with medical students, I suspect you're selling yourself short. If you're at the sort of smaller-scale college that tends to have extensive general education requirements, you're likely to gain an automatic advantage if you express genuine interest in the material. Also, a well-developed ability to cram frantically does not always allow one to break the curve. I wanted to scream every time an engineering major asked, "Do we have to know this for the exam?" It was only ameliorated by the pre-meds asking, "Do we have to know anything for the exam?" Pre-meds were also the ones who were intolerable pests about getting their grades changed because they "needed" an A. Oh, well, then, let me urge the prof to revise your C+ upwards. As for math chops, the same phenomenon asserted itself: difficulty getting the engineering students to do algebra, and difficulty getting the pre-meds to do arithmetic. I'd be much more comfortable with someone from a regular major who has curiosity then with someone who enters college with the desire to get rich in medicine. All in all, the experience left me leery for a long time of going to the doctor or driving over new bridges.

Regardless of my crankiness, I approve of the provision of different paths. At my undergrad institution, the options were "Physics for Poets," an intermediate algebra-heavy course, and the calc course for physics, chem, and engineering majors. Despite the derogatory name, profs found the "Poets" course to be an interesting challenge, since they needed to focus on concepts instead of just slapping equations on the board. It was harder to devise good tests for, too. Despite that, the course seemed to be fairly rewarding while I was in attendance. Though I could be biased.

But the weather class -- I like that. Everyone's an expert on weather. Did they have open ended essay questions like -- Hot enough for you? Explain.

I'm wondering if the "Weather" course was experimental, or theoretical. Usually, the problem is that everyone always talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.

Posted by mds | June 1, 2007 1:24 PM

Nolaboyd,

You're right I am conflating the canon and the distribution requirements a bit. What I was driving at however unclearly is a couple of things: 1) it is difficult in a very competitive environment (and I graduated from college 25 years ago so its only gotten worse) to force people to take things that they are going to sturggle with at best -- I know that sounds a bit cretinous, but if, having been a liberal arts type, you now need to go on to grad schoold to actually earn a living, a couple of mediocre to bad grades can be rather devastating; 2) people have a variety of opinions about what consititutes the properly educated individual and a certain tendency is toward the really dead white male canon (by the way, despite what I said earlier, I always find the dismissal of dead white males a priori due to their race and gender unbelievably anti-intellectual -- he's a dead white male, but he's Karl Marx for Christ's sake) or variations thereof -- some of this seems like reactionary snobbery to me as opposed to a real belief that these texts are essential; and 3) I have some degree of faith that students can figure out what will interest them, move them and lead them to become truly educated. I took but two literature courses in college, both variations on 20th Century American Lit, but found after college that this was an area of lasting appeal and even deeper rewards in adulthood.

mds -- Too funny. The whines of pre-meds are not a pretty thing.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | June 1, 2007 1:46 PM

'Now, I don't think everyone should be required to "solve calculus equations" or enroll in advanced econometrics. I think a poli sci / history major would be better served by exposure to mathematical logic, or, looking at our government, an innumeracy-avoidance course. '

Innumeracy avoidance should include the basics of calculus. You don't have to be able to use it, you don't need to remember any of the lingo, but if you never even learned the basic implications of Riemann sums, you are not well educated. Without first hand experience in the language that describes all observable, physical phenomena, you do not have a scientific world-view. Instead, you have, at best, religious belief in a scientific world-view.

Posted by Njorl | June 1, 2007 1:48 PM

As someone with no calculus experience I will admit it -- I pretty much view this whole internet thing -- well, hell television and telephones too -- as miraculous machines that work in ways that I can't really comprehend, but as long as I continue to believe in them and appease the gods by paying my monthly bills, they will continue to be kind to me. I occassionally wait for machinery to heal itself. Oddly enough, it sometimes does.

So as a militant atheist, I will cop to having a religious notion of science.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | June 1, 2007 1:55 PM

Is it really so bad to get a 'c'? I got a lot of c's and still had many offers for jobs and grad school. The point of an education isn't to get grades, it is to learn.

Those odd courses pay off sometimes too. I got a nice fellowship to study physics after an interview that consisted mostly of discussions of the Gracchi.

Posted by Njorl | June 1, 2007 2:32 PM

The point of an education isn't to get grades, it is to learn.

This is a great attitude. At my college first year students were only given pass/fail grades, which helped take the pressure off. (Unfortunately for me, that was probably the year I did my best work as an undergrad.) Lots of people I knew tried out different courses, searching for a major, during that year.

On the other hand, it's hard to convince people that grades don't matter, because they really do. Me: 3.3 average, elite school, unable to get into grad school at the same place. Weird. I ended up getting into a better place, but it's always struck me as being strange.

Posted by RSA | June 1, 2007 2:57 PM

Njorl,

I'd like to blithely says its not such a big deal to get Cs, but I know that even with but a single C on my transcript from a pretty highly rated small liberal arts college that I got shut out of a whole bunch of good, but not top ten law schools. My 3.25 GPA and mid 600s LSATs in 1982 weren't setting the world on fire. Med schools were worse.

I have recently given some advice to a young law school applicant and was amazed that his 3.75 at another good small university and top flight LSATs (they changed the scale so I'm unable to come up with the number -- it would have been equivalent to about 750 on the old scale) still didn't get him into a host of places.

So grinding for grades is a drag and an anti-intellectual process, but it also conforms with the reality of the moment for certain professions. I don't know if this is as true in other fields.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | June 1, 2007 3:03 PM

I guess some some fields are different.

I remember some law student friends of mine preparing for moot court. They were psyched because they were sure they were going to "kick ass". There generally wasn't any need to kick eachother's asses in physics. The desire and capacity to kick ass is useful in law.

There were also other avenues for achievement in physics. My grades were not that good but I had a few good publications as an undergrad. I don't think there is that much opportunity for publishing in undergraduate curricula geared toward law school.

Posted by Njorl | June 1, 2007 4:05 PM

Kicking ass in the context of school, even in law school, never made a lot of sense to me. There's not a finite amount of learning that can go on. But there were a lot of folks who had this attitude, which is one of the reasons I never feel nostalgic for law school in the way that I do for undergraduate days.

On the other hand, kicking ass in the courtroom is enjoyable, particularly when you are on the side of the good guys, which most of the time I am fortunate enough to be.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | June 1, 2007 4:40 PM