“If you want an Ivy League education, you could fork over $200 grand or so and go to Cornell or Harvard for four years. Alternatively, you could save a ton of cash by simply reading the same books Ivy League students are assigned.” …
I love that syllabi are becoming public but I completely disagree with this:
Reading a book isn’t the same as reading it, discussing it, being lectured on it, being evaluated in some way on your comprehension of it, etc, etc.
And course content is far from the only benefit of attending an Ivy League school…
This is strange. Separating out the Ivy League from ‘everyone else’ is silly on one level, because you’re artificially dividing them from peers like MIT, Stanford, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Emory, UCLA, Berkeley, UVa, Michigan, etc. Secondly, this is going to be very much based upon major and the curriculum. I bet the kids at St. John’s are far more likely to read The Prince or Republic than your average physics major at Harvard or Cornell. And my Columbia students looked at me like I had lost my mind when I referred them to The Elements of Style.
Also, in order to be included professors have to voluntarily make their syllabi available to the project. I do have to say that I very much appreciate the Syllabus of the Month for January 2016: “Social Theory Through Complaining.” (http://opensyllabusproject.org/syllabus-of-the-month-jan-2016/). I am relatively sure that I made every single complaint on the weekly topic list while studying sociological theory in grad school. LOL!
On a personal level, I read The Prince, Republic, The Elements of Style, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” On Liberty, and Democracy in America at my decidedly non-Ivy League undergraduate college. I also read the less male- and white-centric Gender Trouble, “History Will Absolve Me”, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, The Wretched of the Earth, Sundiata and other selections in philosophy and the humanities. (Some I was surprised to see left off were The Social Contract by Rousseau and The Protestant Ethic by Weber - although The Protestant Ethic is #2 on the sociology list. And there’s no Foucault!)
I read Hamlet, Frankenstein, Heart of Darkness and the Canterbury Tales in high school. (And The Awakening, which was one of my favorites.)
I’ve read very few of these- and really have no interest either. There are very few books by ancient men that I care for and I don’t particularly consider them necessary to be an “educated” person.
@romanigypsyeyes While many of these are by ancient men and, in general, many college readings center around old, white, western men, I think to write off the whole category is a bit far.
For example, A Theory of Justice is one of my favorite philosophy books / pieces - it was published in 1971. I would say that if more people learned about Rawls, a lot of current thought would be revised.
I do agree that you don’t at all need to read any of these to be educated, but I do think some of these have some significant value.
Also, as a sophomore at a non-ivy college, I have read half of the ivy list - partially due to my interest in philosophy and taking philosophy courses. I would agree that the list itself doesn’t really offer much insight.
@julliet wait, that syllabus was real!? I saw it elsewhere and assumed it was fake.