Humanities vs. Maths/Sciences

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
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<p>sakky. I feel you on what you are saying. You are probably the only person that can exceed me in controversy by saying exactly whats on her mind ( i know you’re a girl, but u pretend to be a guy so people take you more seriously, I’ll play along and pretend not to know… LOLZ!)</p>

<p>There are easier majors at Berkeley in terms of sheer work. I think that people who are headed to law school should take those majors. Definitely. And some people really do drop out of engineering because they dont like it and pursue a different major. </p>

<p>If you find that your life goal is to work in non profit, or try to save the world, and there is a major that fits your goals better, then there is nothing wrong with it… the freedom to pursue your dreams without having to worry about prestige is something that should be respected… It does seem arrogant to throw it in people’s faces about the classes… And I am guilty of that as well. If I acted arrogantly to a Berkeley person, then I am sorry for that. When I am outside of Berkeley, you don’t understand how happy I am to meet a person from Cal. There is just no other school like ours period! We are tops in both sciences and humanities for our departamental majors!</p>

<p>Say you are a Legal studies major and you want to write your thesis on how IP intellectual propery rights is rooted in the nature of public sentiment for community and sharing, instead of profit based motives. Where else can such a radical idea be formed? Only in a humanities major at Berkeley, where they can access top classes in tech laws and how it affects people. Possibilities like this are endless at Berkeley, and this is the true golden progressive nature of what Berkeley can provide in education to students.</p>

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<p>Avoidingwork, I agree that technical studies are more quantitative and the humanities and arts are judged by opinion/criticism, but why does that necessarily mean that the humanities/arts have to be graded higher than technical studies for less work? What exactly does the fact that something is judged by opinion have to do with higher grading schemes and less work? I fail to see the connection. </p>

<p>And furthermore, you point out that there are plenty of successful engineers but not many successful artists. And to that, I say, ‘So what?’. What does that have to do with the questions at hand? The questions at hand are why are humanities courses graded, on average, easier than technical courses, and why do they assign less work on average? So just because there happen to be lots of successful engineers in the world, that means that engineering should be graded hard? Again, I fail to see the connection.</p>

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<p>I also see that people are trying to couch things in terms of simply pursuing their interests and not worry about prestige and all this high-falutin’ idealism. And that may well be true for some people. I agree that there really are some people who pursue gut fluffy majors because they truly are interested in them.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I think you have to agree with me that there are plenty more students who are in those majors not because they are really interested in pursuing the subject. They have no idealistic plans for pursuing something of deep intellectual interest. They are not interested in pursuing radical ideas. Lots (not all, but lots) of those students are in those majors for one reason and one reason only - because it’s easy. A lot of those students are in those majors because they just want to do as little as possible and still get a Berkeley degree. </p>

<p>I have no quarrel with students pursuing a non-prestigious major because they truly care about the subject. However, I, and I think most everyone who has seen the situation does have a problem with what is really happening. Let’s face it. There are students who just want to hang out and have a good time and hardly ever show up to class or study or do much of anything at all. How can they do that and still graduate? Simple. They enter one of those fluff majors. In essence, those majors have become a haven for laziness and irresponsibility. </p>

<p>Again, I would repeat, not all students in those majors are lazy and irresponsible. Some truly are interested in the subject. But I think even those students in those majors would have to concede that it is a fact that there are a lot of lazy students in the major. And that’s a problem. These students need to shape up. You’re at Berkeley to study and learn, not to sit around all day long doing nothing for weeks on end while still getting an easy degree. </p>

<p>Surely nobody here is going to defend laziness?</p>

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<p>Sakky, you failed to read my post. I didn’t say I got a C because I only read 20% of the material, I said I read all the material (probably, at that point, 5 books+a reader) except 20% of ONE book, not all the of the material. And I would think that someone as meticulous as you would find stats to back up your claims about humanities being easier with less harsh grading standards. You say “many not all” of the majors are easy and are joke majors, but the fact is that the majority of humanities students are either English, History, Poli Sci, or Philosophy majors, not ____ studies. Are those easy, non prestigious majors? BTW, If anyone can find the rankings of these proprams please post them. You say people work hard all semester and read all the material and still fail in tech. majors, well maybe they’re just not that smart. Stats, stats, stats, I want stats!</p>

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<p>First off, why are you bringing up rankings? You know as well as I know that rankings have to do with the quality of the graduate programs and the research of the department. I do not dispute that the Berkeley humanities graduate programs (all of them) are highly rigorous - far far more rigorous than the undergraduate programs. But just because you have a highly ranked graduate department does not mean that your undergraduate program is rigorous. I think we talked about this before.</p>

<p>And second of all, you ask me for stats, but why aren’t you asking them of yourself. After all, you are the one asserting that humanities are just as hard as the sciences, yet when I disagree, why is it that you are the one who gets to demand to see the stats? If you think it’s fair for me to have to find stats to back up my assertions, then it is also fair for me to ask you for stats to back up your assertions. What’s fair is fair. </p>

<p>Third, since you ask for data, how about this:</p>

<p>"[UCBerkeley Professor Jasper] Rine described the shock he felt during his three years on the Committee on Teaching from roughly 1998 to 2000 when he reviewed teaching records for large undergraduate classes, with more than 100 students, in which no one got less than an A-, year after year. At the time, Rine asked Associate Registrar Walter Wong to assemble some data looking at upper division and lower division grading in the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering, so that he could distinguish trends from anecdotal exceptions. The results were clear. “The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, “while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-…” "</p>

<p><a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html[/url]”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>So maybe you ought to contact Professor Rine and tell him that he’s wrong and that there is no difference in the grading schemes between Berkeley humanities and Berkeley technical classes. </p>

<p>Finally, let me give you another example of tough engineering grading. In chemical engineering thermodynamics (ChemE141), a midterm consisted of 3 questions. The last one was on material in a chapter that the prof said was not going to be on the exam, but was there anyway. The other questions were about the previous 12-15 chapters. A lot of people in the class didn’t read that last chapter, and consequently couldn’t answer that last question. However a lot of people did read that last chapter, and did answer the question correctly. So when the grades came out, basically, everybody who didn’t read that last chapter ended up with scores that were curved to at best a ‘D’, and usually an ‘F’ After all, that last question was worth 33 points out of a 100, and if you hadn’t read that last chapter, the best you could ever get is a 67. And of course the first 2 questions were not exactly a walk in the park, and nobody got full points on the first 2 questions. Hence, you don’t read 1 chapter (in fact, a chapter that a lot of people didn’t think they didn’t have to read), and you effectively fail the exam. I think that is entirely commensurate with what happened to you.</p>

<p>What I really want to know is whether people in your classes can do the work and still fail. You say you got a ‘C’. Well, what I can tell you is that a LOT of engineering/science students would love to trade your ‘C’ for what they’re getting. In engineering and science, you can do all the work and still get an ‘F’. I doubt that that’s the case for you.</p>

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<p>First, I’ve never said that humanities are graded harsher than tech classes, so its not my job to find evidence. All I’ve said is that if you think the majority of them are easy, you’ll be unpleasantly surprised when you don’t get a good grade. I’ve said it over and over that I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that tech majors have harsher grading, I just wanted some data to back that up. Lastly, you keep bringing up people that work hard and still flunk. So what? People work hard and still flunk in all majors. Maybe they’re not smart enough to cut it.</p>

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<p>Oh? I would like to see people who work hard in a humanities major and still flunk. Get C’s? Maybe. But get F’s? I highly doubt it. </p>

<p>But anyway, you asked for data, so looks like Professor Jasper Rine has it, so maybe together we should ask him what he has to say about it. He has apparently studied this topic in great detail, as demonstrated in the colloquia. So how about we write a joint email to him and ask him what kind of evidence he can show us, and we will then (with his permission) repost it here so that we can all look at the grading schemes of Berkeley technical and non-technical courses and notice the differences. That will solve the problem once and for all. Sound like a plan?</p>

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<p>If that’s something you feel like you want to do then by all means go ahead. I’d be interested in the results. As for your saying that nobody flunks humanities courses, I’d just say that that doesn’t bode to well for the intelegence of tech majors, because that would mean that every F given at Cal belongs to them. I you want to make that argument then go for it, but it says more about tech students than it does about humanities students.</p>

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<p>I didn’t say that nobody flunks humanities courses. I am saying that those who do the work don’t flunk. Obviously the guy who never hands in anything in a humanities course or hands in blank pieces of paper, or doesn’t even bother to show up for the exams, will fail.</p>

<p>I don’t know why I should be the only one asking Professor Rine. I think either you should ask him, or we should be doing it jointly. After all, you were the one who was asking for the data. Here’s a guy who obviously has it. </p>

<p>Right now, I am happy just with his quote of </p>

<p>“”[UCBerkeley Professor Jasper] Rine described the shock he felt during his three years on the Committee on Teaching from roughly 1998 to 2000 when he reviewed teaching records for large undergraduate classes, with more than 100 students, in which no one got less than an A-, year after year. At the time, Rine asked Associate Registrar Walter Wong to assemble some data looking at upper division and lower division grading in the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering, so that he could distinguish trends from anecdotal exceptions. The results were clear. “The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, “while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-…” </p>

<p>I am perfectly content with that quote as sufficient proof to me that humanities classes are graded easier than tech classes. I think you should be too. However, if you care to disagree with him, then let’s go ask him together.</p>

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<p>Sure, I’m content with it as well. Again, I never said that I believed humanities to be graded harsher than tech classes, I just wanted proof. I wouldn’t exactly call prof. rines’s statement proof, but it works well enough for me that I’ll let you have it. However, it doesn’t change my oppinion for a minute that humanities classes are easy. I’m not trying to imply that this has been your argument (unless it is, in which case you should feel free to state it), but there is a theme running on this site where its fair game to say that humanities are easy, which is not a far from saying that they’re worthless, which is something that I wholeheartedly disagree with.</p>

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<p>I never said that they were worthless. </p>

<p>I think we also have to examine what the word ‘easy’ means. “Easy” is always a relative statement. Even the easiest humanities course at Berkeley would be extremely difficult for somebody who, say, doesn’t speak English (which comprises the majority of people in the world). Hence, you could say that the easiest, fluffiest course at Berkeley would be extremely difficult for the majority of the people in the world. However, I think the context is that, relative to the standard of the average Berkeley student, certain courses at Berkeley are indeed ‘easy’. Or if you prefer, they are ‘easier’. And a disproportionate number of these ‘easy’ or ‘easier’ courses tend to be concentrated in the humanities majors than in the tech majors. That’s the reality that I and Professor Rine have been alluding to. </p>

<p>Now, I know full well that a lot of humanities students at Berkeley don’t like to admit that truth. But it is the truth, like it or not. If Berkeley humanities students really don’t like it that they are tarred with the brush of ‘easiness’, then they should work to reform the humanities majors to make them more rigorous. Again, getting back to those fluff majors that I would prefer not to name, it is precisely the humanities students who work hard who should be criticizing those fluff majors the most, because those fluff majors are making all humanities students look bad.</p>

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<p>Well, couldn’t it also be that many humanities students are glad that they aren’t in such a cutthroat field because they are given an opportunity to learn and enjoy thier chosen field? BTW, very condescending analogy with the non-english speakers. I could say that tech majors are hard because third graders would find it hard, or mentally ■■■■■■■■ people would find it hard, or whatever, but I wont sink to that level. So to end it, I’ll just agree with you. Tech students work harder, they are mindless machines pumping out the “right” answers so they can have mindless yet highpaying careers, while humanities students don’t work nearly as hard but they enjoy what they do and will have satisfing lives to look forward to. See how easy it is to demean another persons major?</p>

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<p>Well, see, that’s the prickliness that I am talking about. I am well aware that a lot of humanities students are highly sensitive to the charge that humanities majors are easier than other majors at Berkeley, particularly the tech ones.</p>

<p>But unfortunately, it is the truth. As Professor Rine has pointed out, humanities courses really are, as a whole, graded easier than tech courses are. Obviously this isn’t true for every single humanities course and every single tech course, but on the whole, it is true. You might say that this is all a bunch of smoke here, but there really is a fire also. The bottom line is that really there is a lot of truth to the charge. I know it’s an uncomfortable truth, but it won’t go away if we just tiptoe around it.</p>