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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (51241)	3/1/2008 8:55:07 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 543043

Well John - what we don't need is less knowledgable engineers and doctors. What we need is more liberal art students with a back ground in how things are physically accomplished. It's actually possible to have both with better thinking about general education. At present, however, the problem is not the one you've identified, save in engineering. Liberal arts students at most universities/colleges I know about, are required to take some science and some math (differs from campus to campus and Brown, as I recall, Dale, is something of go it alone campus). At my campus, those requirements were at least two courses in math, I would have preferred required calculus but lost that argument; and four science courses, in addition to other required courses in the humanities and social sciences. We should have found a way to require an engineering course or two but could never work it out. On the other hand, engineers and bachelor of science students take next to nothing outside their majors. They can graduate with no history, no philosophy, no literature, no social science, you name it. In general, the courses outside engineering are one or two electives somewhere else in the university. Moreover, science education for nonscience majors is absolutely abysmal. Don't get me started but the short of it is that their curricula are devoted to preparing students for grad school and not for the education of the general population. One exception in my teaching career. Our university president, when he finished out his term, retired to the biology department with a mission to transform their general education approach to biology. He produced a wonderful course. My engineering degree took approximately 218 quarter hours. The amount of non technical electives was minimal. Today the degree take less than 200 quarter hours. I think it was too hard to keep up the enrollments. Two schools of thought here. The credentialing bodies for engineering degrees pushed for more courses. But our own engineering faculty was fairly divided here. Those who wished to liberalize their course offerings, however, argued they were powerless because of the role of credentialling bodies. They argued, persuasively as far as I was concerned, that it would have been fairly easy to carve out 4 to 8 courses (depending on the field and the faculty member making the argument) for liberal arts. You see me as narrow minded. I see non technicals as unknowing. Perhaps there is a lesson for each of this in this. At least we know where each of us is coming from. Actually, I don't see you, specifically you, as narrow minded. I find you interesting. Best I can tell your political convictions are fairly rightish. Expressed via a lot of the cliches from the right. But here you are, hanging out on a political centrist thread, where almost everyone is open minded, critical, argumentative, and definitely not binary. I find that admirable that you hang out here. Next time you need surgery - think about what education you want the doctor to have. Perhaps that is why surgeons are particularly lacking in humor. I've got a very accomplished niece who just finished her internship. And, best I can tell, she got a terrific medical school education at Brown and Columbia, which prepared her to do surgery quite well. And complemented a liberal arts degree in psychology from Barnard. I expect doctors to get medical training in medical school; business managers to get training in MBA programs; lawyers in law school; and so on. Down the line. Sorry about the rant, Bob. You just pulled a plug. And know that I didn't even get well started. You and Kate hit a very big sore spot for me as it concerns undergraduate education.