Thursday, October 14, 2004
Haha! American Cultures suck!
Good news! The university realized how utterly stupid the AC requirement is and want to relax it so maybe a class about cultures instead of a class about "White people suck" would qualify.
“We want to give students as many choices as possible,” [Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Christina] Maslach said. “We don’t want the sense that they were forced to take any class.”
Note that she says that "we," the administration, doesn't want the sense that "they," the students, were forced to take any class. It doesn't really matter to them that students are forced to take any class, they just don't want the sense that it's the case.
Assuming it was a slipup isn't much better. As long as there's an AC requirement, students are going to be forced to take a class. That's the nature of "requirements." Making the list of possible classes longer doesn't change that.
“Some faculty in the sciences may feel that science is ‘value free’ and exists apart from social contexts,” [Chair of the AC Subcommittee Jeff] Romm said. “But we need to look at the consequences technology and science have within society.”
Which faculty? I want to see his list. I'm sure certain science faculty members would, too. Or is ESPM the department of broad generalizations convenient to "the cause."
I was not too keen on hearing people whine, and I wanted to actually learn something with my AC requirement, so, as a young and bright-eyed freshman or sophomore (I don't recall which), I saw "Hmm, History 7B. Maybe I'll learn something about recent American history, since I didn't learn anything in high school since my history teacher taught out of Zinn's A People's History of the United States." Oh, man, was I an idiot. It turned out to be History 7B with Professor Litwack. I still don't know what's happened in America since the civil war.
. . .
|
. . .
|
