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Neither did Homer. What’s your point?</p>
<p>“I know plenty of people (some are professors) who’ve read Socrates”</p>
<p>I think my point is obvious.</p>
<p>Cutting sentences in half and out of context just makes you a ■■■■■. You don’t look ‘good’ right now.</p>
<p>Context doesn’t really matter in this case now does it? You posted something wrong, I corrected it. I don’t see the problem here.</p>
<p>I didn’t post something “wrong” when implying that someone has read Socratic philosophy. Who actually wrote it down is irrelevant, and you’re just using it as an excuse to be an as$hole. As for context, yes, it does matter. I made an argument and only used the those people and they’re Adam Smith writings as a support for it. They were not the thing to poke at like some wanna-be high-mind with something to prove. Either respond to the main point made or shut up.</p>
<p>Who actually wrote it down? These aren’t verbatim transcripts; Socrates is more Plato’s literary creation than a real person. But sure, let’s not bother with the facts. And your “main point” isn’t really worth responding to.</p>
<p>Biokinetica: Yeah, but part of an education is learning how to teach yourself to some degree. I have had great professors who do indeed know how to convey and reinforce relevant material while assigning a heavy reading/writing load. And often these readings can be at least somewhat inspiring and encourage one to critique and think in a creative way. Such courses are useful, and I am a chem and bio major saying this. Most math/science courses, unfortunately, are not designed in a way that requires any sort of creative, critical, or out of the box thinking. Luckily I have been and currently am in some that do, and I can honestly say that my humanities have helped me to do better than most in the course, who up until then had to simply memorize problem types/procedures or circle a letter/number on an exam. The students who normally struggle in sections of science courses that are structured like the ones I’m alluding to are those who had the tendency to dodge humanities and social science courses simply because it requires them to read, write, and think a lot more. In most science courses, once you’ve wrapped your head around a single concept/problem, that’s the end and the solution is relatively straight forward. Unfortunately, actually doing science doesn’t often work that way. It takes a lot of thought like the societal issues that may be addressed in one’s social science or humanities courses. There is not one answer there or in complex problems in the sciences. It takes a properly structured science course for some of the UGs here to slap them in the face and make them realize this, when they could have at least been exposed to such thinking in one of those philosophy, history, religion, or political science courses they dodged. Not to mention, for aspiring scientists, such courses could teach some that there are indeed such things as ethics.</p>
<p>Although I agree with what I believe is your main point (humanitarian studies having the potential to enable unique problem solving skills), I think it takes some will on the student’s part to make even that happen. I don’t think giving biology majors civics/politics oriented course material will automatically make them more well-rounded problem solvers. I think the student has to want that sort of thing. You seem to, and that’s great, but I don’t think everybody else is terribly concerned about it. Making sure they have a history/political science/philosophy course might edge them toward what you want, but that can only be an enabler. </p>
<p>As for the state of science and math teaching today, I’d have to disagree with the idea that most math/science courses require you to think critically, or even creatively. Science is all about being critical. Some instructors teach these skills better than others, but I think the subjects themselves are very critical. Math, in particular, is teeming with patterns that can be manipulated in very creative ways. Calculus and fractal geometry are bursting with that kind of potential.</p>
<p>That was a very thoughtful post, I appreciate it.</p>
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<p>As someone who took 2 introductory CS courses and knew/worked with dozens of colleagues who majored in CS…that’s not true…especially when you go beyond the first few intro courses.</p>
<p>In the two intro programming courses for CS majors I took, there were programming language textbooks and manuals for the compilers and operating systems we used. </p>
<p>For classmates who went beyond and became CS majors, their reading loads went up to at least 40-60 pages/week for the intermediate/advanced courses. For those working on honors projects or doing private readings on advanced topics, the reading loads could be much more than that. </p>
<p>One CS major friend at a second-tier institution did at least that much reading…and did much more on his own initiative on top of everything else because he felt the assigned work was inadequate for his career plans. Upon graduation, he was one of only 25% of his class to be immediately hired for a technical job related to his education and is now working for Microsoft while the vast majority of his CS graduating class ended up on the unemployment line for a year or more.</p>
<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>
<p>well… I hardly have any reading as an engineering student. In fact, if it wasn’t for Environmental Ethics, I’d have virtually no reading every week.</p>
<p>But that reading has been substituted with 11 hour coding sessions and using the internet to read up on stuff</p>
<p>Do math majors typically read?</p>
<p>back on the ORIGINAL topic…</p>
<p>I totally think colleges are dumbing down to attract applications (and lower admission rate). As a sophomore with only a 215 PSAT score, i’ve received emails from Rutgers, Columbia, and other good schools. obviously theyre not serious.</p>
<p>^Be aware that colleges do not see your PSAT score. College Board can’t release it - they just release your name and colleges contact you, regardless of your score.</p>
<p>yeah, if you do remotely well you’ll get letters from all over the place. I got places like MIT and Cal Tech that I probably had a 2% chance of getting in to.</p>
<p>Michigan is actually kinda doing the opposite of dumbing down, but only by default. We switched to the common app so there are more applicants + they want a smaller class size = lower acceptance rate. We still may be dumbing down though so it might just cancel out.</p>
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<p>Yes, there are math books and papers to read. Though reading a page of advanced math may take as long as reading dozens of pages of humanities or social studies material.</p>
<p>215 is actually very competitive psat. It’ll probably increase when you take the SAT. 215 indicates at least 700 on most parts. This makes you at least have a chance at many top schools.</p>
<p>Not gonna lie, I’m in my 2nd year of college and have completed 52 credits and taking 14 right now and I’ve only actually read maybe 1000 pages total the whole time. Out of maybe the 20,000+ or so assigned and I have a 3.9 gpa. I’m an engineering major.</p>
<p>I think they are still giving you the same amount of work they used to, but it’s optional whether you actually do it or not because they are testing more on knowing the equations and how to use them, but not where they come from, why we use them, how it all comes together…but it’s there in case we feel like knowing. So you can get by knowing how to solve problems, but not actually understanding them with an A.</p>
<p>I think that’s heavily dependent upon which school you go to, because my tests certainly required you to know where things came from and what they really mean.</p>
<p>Colleges are businesses. They want your money and dont give a fluck if you learn anything or not. Soon, a degree will not stand for being an intellectual but it will signify conformity and obedience. Ironically, these traits are tremendously valuable to white collar employers.</p>