Anyone have a miracle to share?

floatingriver
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:26:13 +0000

BrownParent - Maybe weak subjects is the wrong way to say this; perhaps it would be better to say subjects a student is not passionate about. Brown students with consistent B/B+'s in a subject often (but not always) earned those grades because they were not passionate enough about the subject to work hard. This I think you will agree with. At Brown, students take courses because they are passionate about the subject. Save one or two concentration-level distribution requirements, there is little to motivate students to take classes in areas they are not passionate about. If your argument is that Brown students are unlikely to avoid their weaknesses, then I highly agree. But if you are saying that Brown students value a liberal-arts education to the extent that there is no subject they would not like to avoid courses in then I disagree. Consider this: in high school we are told that GPA-wise a course in English and a course in Mathematics are just as important. It doesn’t matter whether we are a USAMO level mathematician or are a brilliant playwright. GPA weights both equally. In college, English and Mathematics are only two of dozens of different subjects. And contrary to what many would think, a student who hates English class may excel in language class and even place in national speech and essay contests in that language. Likewise, a student who hates math may be a brilliant scientist who places top ten in national science competitions. Dislike of english does not mean dislike of the humanities, nor does dislike of math mean dislike of the sciences. While I do not intend to take a single English literature class at Brown, that does not mean I would not enjoy a creative writing class, nor that I won’t be disappointed if I can’t take foreign language every semester. After suffering through four years of annotation checks, and multiple choice tests about pointless details in the literature we read, I think it’s understandable that some of us (depending on how it is taught at our schools) might emerge from high school resenting traditional English class. The argument that it gets much better in college is probably true. But there are so many other classes such as Economics, Arabic, Organic Chemistry, Egyptology etc. that we have no experience in and would love to try.