Iyer: Easily gutted education
Iyer: Easily gutted education
Friday, September 18, 2009
A long, long time ago, in a Blue Book far, far away, there was a New Hope. It was called “Biology of Gender and Sexuality.” And it had come to assist in the fulfillment of the Science and Social Science distributional requirements needed for graduation by all Yale students.
Like clubs with free food, TAs who speak English and Provost Salovey’s mustache, “gut” science courses can be the target of frenzied, chaotic quests. Since 2004, when Yale instituted new distributional requirements, students have searched for the best “Sc” classes, including the aforementioned “Porn in the Morn,” which was recently stripped of its “Sc” credit, and which the News reported yesterday would be taught no more. At a college with a centuries-old liberal arts focus, this search is unsurprisingly common across campus. But the fact that such gut “Sc” courses are available to us has an important effect on the collegewide education (besides an apparent schoolwide obsession with “Biological Anthropology”). As a result, insofar as the detailed breadth of one’s studies goes, science majors, not humanities major, graduate from Yale much better educated.
Before I find dense pages of Plato being thrown at me, let me make clear that I’m not trying to accuse students of the humanities of doing anything wrong, or of not studying well. Nor do I doubt that they are as intelligent, eager to learn, and interested in their subjects and majors as students of the sciences. Taking easier courses outside your interest area is a natural, even an economic, choice on the part of rational students. But that doesn’t change the fact of who comes out better educated.
Real science study comes from learning how the world works on a microscopic scale, what molecules do in different organisms and why the chemicals you mixed in that test tube are smoking suspiciously. This whole sector of an intellectual edification comes from learning the facts, theories, and particular analytical skills of chemistry, physics and biology. Because of gut science classes, many students bypass a crucial part of a liberal arts education.
It is difficult to take a history class at Yale that does not teach the real analytical abilities taught in a history class. Even in easier classes that fulfill the “Hu” distribution, it is hard to avoid learning true humanities. As a result, science majors who take only two “Hu” classes get a wider intellectual look at all the liberal arts than many other students at Yale, like the many who major in the humanities and take only two “Sc” classes.
Yale’s reputation for being stronger in the humanities is a self-fulfilling prophecy that means many science students come to New Haven knowing they will be surrounded by both the arts and the sciences, and that they will have to engage in both areas. They come to Yale to complement chemical engineering with Donald Kagan.
Yale College has great science programs, and it has made it known to college guidance counselors around the globe that it wants such departments to be better noticed for their value. The administration has built new science facilities, like the Malone Center on Prospect Street, and promoted its science and engineering programs in its public relations efforts.
But the effort to improve Yale’s science programs cannot be restricted to campaigns targeting core students in relevant majors. Yale’s History Department is well-known because not only do history majors take great classes with the best professors academia has to offer, but almost all other students can, and do, as well. If sciences are to be better appreciated, all students should be able to value them. The first step is to incentivize students to take real science classes in the first place.
I’m not trying to extend onto others the “difficulties” of those who choose the life of the Hill, or scold anyone for taking “Porn in the Morn.” From what I’ve been told, it was supposed to have been a very well-taught and interesting class. Maybe my Blue Booking hasn’t been detailed enough and I’m being too narrow-minded in talking only about science guts. Perhaps there are myriad gut humanities and social science classes I’m ignoring. But if that’s the case, these classes should have their distributional requirement credits taken away as well.
An obvious problem with that, of course, is that it would essentially tell a professor that her class on a given social science no longer qualifies as one. But as far as I know, the Blue Book’s sphere of influence does not contain the global academic categorization of different course subjects. And most professors probably won’t re-evaluate their places in academia based on the credits Yale undergraduates are given.
Yale administrators should use the distributional requirements as a system of incentives to educate us as comprehensively as possible, so that we can go into the world with knowledge, analytical skills and thoughtfulness (and an active ATM-happy ability to help the University’s endowment bounce back).
Yale has Political Science, History and Art departments among the best in the nation. And I doubt that any humanities students who are at our school are incapable of learning, or doing well in, chemistry, physics or biology. But in the broad sense of study, most science majors are getting the better education. The distributional requirement system should be changed to equalize, by leveling up, all undergrads’ ranges of scholarship.
Until then, we can take advantage of the situation as it is. May the “Porn in the Morn” of the future be with you.
Serrena Iyer is a sophomore in Silliman College.
Comments
None 2 years, 4 months ago
Great article- it needed to be said... for the average person, humanities classes are much easier than a real physics, chemistry, biology or math class. As a result, most members of my graduating class were scientifically illiterate. It's unfortunate that the most advanced work the average Yale undergrad completes is during high school and not college.
But there are market forces at work as well- the US doesn't appreciate scientists and engineers nearly as much as lawyers and bankers and consultants, so most ivy grads eschew more difficult fields because there's no incentive to put yourself through such challenges.
None 2 years, 4 months ago
Part of the problem is that the intro courses in math and science here have a reputation for being grueling, unnecessarily competitive (thanks, pre-meds) and not very well taught. Many humanities majors aren't afraid to challenge themselves at all. They just don't want to put themselves through such an unpleasant experience when they don't have to. The popularity of Brain and Thought is good evidence for this. It has a reputation for being a challenging course in which you learn a lot about one of medicine's biggest frontiers, and it's well taught. And the humanities/social science majors fight tooth and nail to get in.
There are plenty of gut humanities courses (e.g. Vikings, or the Hero in the Ancient Near East). There are also some writing courses in the English department (114-117), which may be interesting and well taught, but are thoroughly useless in the same way that Porn in the Morn is thoroughly useless if the goal is to learn anything about science. However, the real introductory English courses (125, 127 and 129) are much better taught and not nearly as unpleasant as the intro courses in the science departments. The psych department has an awesome intro course...why can't the science departments?
Another part of the problem is that nowadays, the really talented students (ie, the ones who end up at places like Yale) start to specialize when they're in high school. If they were humanities oriented in high school, to get a science credit here they must choose between gut courses or those unpleasant intro courses. Courses like Brain and Thought are accessible to kids who just have your basic high school biology and chemistry, and Quantum Physics and Beyond works for kids who did basic high school physics but have no calculus. But they still get to challenge themselves and learn about real, relevant science.
I believe in a liberal arts education, and I think the drive to specialize so early causes us to miss out on a lot of important things. However, I came to Yale wanting to learn calculus and believing that I should as a responsible student who was good at math in high school. But suffering through Math 112 robbed me of any desire to go on to take 115. So if you really want kids to go for calculus rather than Geometry of Nature, or real bio rather than Porn in the Morn, the intro classes have to become less insufferable.
None 2 years, 4 months ago
The antidote to an over-inflated sense of self-importance in the Science Nerd is as follows: execute a series of watercolor landscapes, play a Mozart's piano concerto -- or sing one of the leads in Rigoletto, and perform Hamlet. For extra credit submit a novel or symphony. Discuss how easy this was compared to biology lab.
None 2 years, 4 months ago
The superficiality you assume in studies of the Humanities shows the real myopia in this discussion. In taking two Humanities, you come nowhere near learning the subtleties of the subjects or the breadth of accessible knowledge. But, then again, you probably stop at intro classes to each field, just as most students flock to Spanish for their easy language. I thought intro chem and bio certainly gave me enough of a basis to either pursue further study or grasp the subject to a fair extent, and your pomposity for assuming otherwise is just embaressing.
None 2 years, 4 months ago
There is little point in following Ms. Iyer's advice. The intro classes in science are geared towards science majors, implicit within them is the assumption that those who take it will continue to the advanced level. On the contrary, humanities classes tend to be encapsulated, making them accessible to everyone. This is why Charles Bailyn endorses the selection of the very classes Ms. Iyer condemns. Second, science and math classes depend on a strong skills and prerequisite background that may be lacking for many students. "Gut" science classes focus on these skills and processes, not the information, which is more important and relevant to Yale students. Finally, Ms. Iyer makes the fundamental fallacy that the learning at this school occurs in the classroom. While the science students, tending to be cloistered in their rooms studying, or confined to rather awkward cliques of like-minded people, may not understand this, any humanities student that discussed the previous class at lunch does. What we do here isn't about the classes or the information, it is about the development of skills and relationships that will serve us a lifetime. Please Ms. Iyer, tell me how intro chem will get me there.
None 2 years, 4 months ago
I am delighted that porn in the morn is gone.
Just suck it up and take a real science class. It's not the science departments' fault that you perceive the subject matter to be inaccessible. It's really not. It may not be easy at first, but it really shouldn't be easy. Get some help, ask questions, and actually try to learn something instead of sliding by in an easy class that teaches you an isolated body of relatively unimportant knowledge.
None 2 years, 4 months ago
Interesting points- though music composition/theory and performance are much closer linked to mathematics than any other area of the humanities.
Also, let's be honest, the typical humanities grad doesn't do any of the things you've listed either.
None 2 years, 4 months ago
I'm a science major, and even I can say that introductory science courses aren't anything to rave about. Taking a "real" science class doesn't really mean you do real science. After taking intro chem, intro physics, etc., I still didn't feel like I knew any more about doing science than I did before.
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