<p>I wasn’t saying that civics/politics should be integrated in science courses. I am proposing this scenario: What if the course is say a biology course completely based upon case studies. All of the concepts are covered in context of these case studies, and not only do you have to figure out what is going in context of the concepts being emphasize, you are asked to draft up an experiment to prove it. There are 1-2 intro. biology II courses here this semester (only 1 does it 1st semester) using this model and I think it is awesome, as they have to do many case studies in and outside of the lecture hall, and then they will be thrown a completely new set of case studies for the examination. It teaches them how to think about science in a manner that allows them to perhaps gain the capability of doing more than circling “a,b,c,d, or e.”<br>
However, many struggle with this structure far more than they were when they taking bio 1 w/a prof. with all multiple choice exams, where if they knew the material only moderately well they should be able to eliminate most answers, with some exceptions (many of the tougher profs. design there questions around this and on more of a sidenote, the problem sets end up being much harder than the exams in such classes, so most stop doing p-sets after realizing this). Now they are being asked to write thoughts down and create; you don’t have blatantly false answers helping you out, even if you’re going to BS, it better be based off of something legit. Something completely different. Also, organic chemistry has two really tough sections that requires one to know the concepts in context of say very complex biological systems or even organomettallic, so students in these courses certainly have to be able to handle something completely new thrown at them. Needless to say, most don’t want to have to apply, and dodge these profs. despite them being the hands down best lecturers that put the most effort in to make the students successful (each section always has the highest exam averages compared to its easier peers). You would be surprised that the other professors make organic chemistry so easy that you could basically get by on memorization on the exams. In fact I’ve seen many schools (“top” and non) where most of the sections are exactly like this. Organic isn’t very useful w/o applications or a model that really requires one to seriously learn the concepts, especially to pre-meds. More than memorization is needed to be a good doctor or scientist period.
It is very unfortunate that such science professors are exception to the rule, and that people are afraid to take them.<br>
I cannot comment on math because I’m pretty sure Emory doesn’t do it right. Just know that when I was in Calc. 1/2, all I needed to do is memorize problem types and then I was set. No creativity or “aha” moments truly required if I had studied.</p>
<p>I hope this helps to clarify my idea. While you may think that the sciences require creativity by their nature, trust me they can be, and often are taught in a way that does not. Perhaps you are much older than I am, and it may have been harder back then, but this is the trend I notice. I would applaud more institutions if they made more of their work closer in style to that seen at MIT (OpenCourseware is my friend lol). Perhaps not nearly as difficult (not to say a little more difficulty will hurt), but in a way that will get intellectual juices flowing more often. Of course this may not be received well by many aspirees attending top colleges hoping for what they view as “manageable”(this bar is set so low that it’s ridiculous) difficulty, with great resources. If all top colleges start, they’ll just have to suck it up and get a great, yet more rigorous and perhaps useful education.</p>