<p>"I’m curious: what’s your opinion on students being required to take some sort of math/STEM field course? "</p>
<p>I think it is stupid for college to <em>require</em> STEM courses. Especially calculus. Luckily, it doesn’t happen that often.</p>
<p>Most schools do not have a core curriculum. If you can’t find a few humanities courses that aren’t the US equivalent of Soviet propaganda, the problem is with you, not the humanities.</p>
<p>But by all means, feel free not to send your daughter to college. The fact that three months of 9th grade English have been less than satisfactory is certainly a great indication that the humanities will be utterly valueless to her.</p>
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Go for it!</p>
<p>Geez, why is it that threads go on for SOOOOO long on the parent’s forum? </p>
<p>Question: Are the humanities dead?</p>
<p>Answer: No.</p>
<p>Next thread.</p>
<p>Because bashing vs defending humanities is one of about 4 main topics here on CC. It gets people riled up no matter how many times it is rehashed.</p>
<p>mokusatsu,</p>
<p>If you want to quote me, please put the correct quote. I would appreciate if you would not alter my words, because it chances the meaning.</p>
<p>apprenticeprof ,</p>
<p>My D. is a straight A+ student in HS Humanities and Social Sciences. It is very easy for her. </p>
<p>The trick? Write politically correct essays, add a grain of personal experience, and quote someone famous. Is it a useful skill? No. Is it easy? Yes, it is.</p>
<p>I am fine with Humanities and Social Sciences in HS, because they are free of charge. However, I doubt that many people would voluntarily pay Stanford tuition ($60,000) for introductory freshman Humanities.</p>
<p>“If you can’t find a few humanities courses that aren’t the US equivalent of Soviet propaganda, the problem is with you, not the humanities.”</p>
<p>The problem is that Humanities in USA have courses similar to propaganda. It’s a shame.</p>
<p>Which you clearly know from all those humanities courses you’ve taken. </p>
<p>Oh wait.</p>
<p>Well when someone is so close minded I’m not sure what you can do. I certainly don’t feel that the humanities and social science courses I took (in either high school or college) were propaganda. I remember when my kids were doing APUSH one assignment was to read only foreign websites about the causes of Pearl Harbor before they read what was in their textbook. Throughout the course they were encouraged to think critically about the biases of the sources the used and not to be taken in by propaganda.</p>
<p>BTW, I have nothing against progressive movement. I often support it in many areas. However, I am not willing to pay substantial money for a course in it. One can get it for free, easily.</p>
<p>mathmom,</p>
<p>Nice example, except … the foreign websites, that you’ve read, were already preselected by your Prof. Approved and translated. </p>
<p>Importantly, your grade depended on your Prof.</p>
<p>I’m still struggling with the idea that a high school kid that isn’t a virulent racist or sexist would have to work at consciously crafting “politically correct” essays on a regular basis. Not every single novel on most high school curriculums lends itself to heavy race/gender based analysis anyway, and just because a novel deals with these issues doesn’t make it “political.”
Writing an essay about race in, say, To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t bowing to political correctness, it is writing about race in a novel directly concerned with the subject. Unless your daughter had originally been planning to write a spirited defense of lynching, I fail to see how the need to be “PC” would be a factor she would need to consider.</p>
<p>apprenticeprof ,</p>
<p>Exactly. Either student is writing politically correct essays or she is labeled as “a virulent racist and sexist.” You suggest self-censoring, such as "if student thinks something outside the box of political correctness - something is wrong with this student.</p>
<p>MY D is neither sexist nor racist. She is not even white :)</p>
<p>What worries me, is the fact that she can write an A+ essay on the book that she haven’t read. As long as she is discussing a politically correct theme, she get’s A. I don’t see useful skills taught in Humanities, that’s it.</p>
<p>My point is simple: it is pathetic to pay $60,000 to study political correctness. You can get it for free, at any corner. Since freshman courses required in Humanities and Social Sciences are focused on PC, I think that price tag is too big for the value. Why spend time and money?</p>
<p>No, I’m saying that I don’t think most high school or college literature classes are routinely demanding that students write about subjects that almost anyone would actually consider to be controversial. </p>
<p>Your views about affirmative action, racial profiling, or other currently controversial topics aren’t generally going to be relevant in essays about novels dealing with race, which tend to take a broader scope. I’m honestly having trouble coming up with a scenario in which writing about, say, There Eyes Were Watching G-d or Beloved would require you to toe some sort of ideological party line - unless you happened to be someone who thought that slavery and segregation were still hot-button issues. </p>
<p>It might help if you could offer some specifics instead of making grand and unsupported announcements.</p>
<p>In terms of college classes, I’ve taken 4 philosophy courses and I haven’t seen any propaganda in any of them, while there was a variety in the value of these courses I’d have to say that there was a definite reliance on truth and reason. And, at least I feel like, I would be the type that would notice propaganda if it was there. </p>
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<p>I don’t know what to tell you. You must not have gone to high school in this era. </p>
<p>World History class, you better not suggest that a country is poor not because of something America or Britain did, but because of a cultural flaw. Civics or American History class, you better not suggest that perhaps it’s okay to expect English be understood by people in the US. You better not question the value of using the money of American taxpayers to stop whatever “bad” thing any other country does to its own people. You better not suggest that maybe it’s okay for private business to determine who they want to do business with based on whatever criteria they want. You better not suggest that maybe firearms don’t cause murders, or that there might be problems with gun control.</p>
<p>Where I went to high school the only assembly we had for a person, we had for a communist adulturer. Not someone with any important impact on my life or anyone I feel any need to care about either. And it was not an optional assembly. I still remember my freshman year they let some girl go on stage and denounce all White people. She didn’t literally say the term “White Devil” but used all the other NOI party lines. And we had to sit there and listen to her crap. I don’t recall them ever allowing their propaganda be as transparent as that again, but it was certainly there.</p>
<p>I thought “The White Devil” was a play by John Webster.</p>
<p>No the foreign websites weren’t preapproved by their teachers. They were told to see what they could find. They weren’t necessarily limited to ones in English, though I suspect most used ones written in English, but I know it was pretty eye opening for them. I don’t think they spent a lot of time in our high school discussing gun control, abortion or other hot button issues.</p>
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<p>Was there not a class called Civics or something equivalent?</p>