<p>“You seemed to think that philosophy was dependent on logic, and I wanted to let you know that major schools of thought don’t center on logic. What’s the issue here? Can I not provide information without you getting all huffy about it?”
First of all, I don’t think I was being huffy. It comes off as a little jerkish to suggest I go study continental philosophy. Logic is an important part of philosophy, that’s all I said. I didn’t say that there would be no philosophy without it (well…). Certainly you agree that logic has been a historically important area of philosophical discourse. Why not just leave it at that? It’s petty to nitpick tangential arguments like that.</p>
<p>“Depends on the level of the class. Whether something is a vector space is first week type stuff.”
Well sure, there are different levels of LA classes, but the course most engineers take tends to be on the less theoretically advanced side, at least from what I’ve heard in the engineering forum and experienced at my institution. In any event I would agree that formulaic proofs tend to be elementary and that advanced subjects generally involve producing non-formulaic proofs.</p>
<p>"Let T be a normal operator on a fi nite-dimensional real inner product
space V such that the characteristic polynomial splits. Prove that V has
an orthonormal basis of eigenvectors of T, hence that T is self-adjoint. "
lol nice. You know examples are more effective when the majority of the people you are trying to pursuade can understand them, yes? I happen to follow, but who knows how many - even engineering - students will easily follow that. That reads like a math major or physics major test question.</p>
<p>“Aren’t those trade schools called community colleges?”
I don’t think so. I think that if that is what is being passed off as trade schools, we need better trade schools. Nothing against community colleges, just from what I know they don’t have strong technical programs. I’d hope technical schools would make technical programs stronger, not weaker.</p>
<p>“You sure that’s algebra and not analysis?”
Yeah, what I meant was that it was a problem often encountered and formulated in elementary algebra. Clearly proofs can draw on a variety of techniques, analysis probably being the heavy-hitter in this situation.</p>
<p>Slippery slop much? How does allowing the students explore different subjects for their first year amount to giving a degree for unfocused study? </p>
<p>Last time I checked it takes four years of study to get a degree, with two years of that being core classes not necessarily related to the major at all. If students are required to take composition and calculus their first year, and then whatever other classes they want, they don’t get behind in progress toward a degree, and get an opportunity to try out new things.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t think calculus should be REQUIRED of all students. But I do agree that something higher than simple “College Algebra” should fulfill the math requirement at universities. A lot of people despise and/or are bad at math, and so making them take calculus would be a terrible drag. What would be a better proposition here? Statistics? After all, statistics can help in liberal arts majors for research.</p>
<p>Most students despise calculus. Even ones that are required to take it for their major. Forcing students to take advanced math won’t accomplish anything. </p>
<p>I like the suggestion for statistics – it’s more concrete and relates more to reality for most people than calculus.</p>
<p>YES, YES and YES. Not only help with research, but it’s pretty the one key tool that the layman can use to make sense of the world–from public health to the economy. I’d argue without a basic understanding of statistics, you really don’t understand the world. Statistics should be required for all college students.</p>
I understand where you are coming from, but doesn’t the <em>definition</em> of 0.999… rely on a notion of convergence? (Of course that’s not how it is presented to middle or high school students.) That’s why I would naturally put the problem into the realm of analysis rather than algebra.</p>
Sorry, I think I completely misunderstood what you meant. I read your earlier statement as a call to abolish majors altogether, as in, “have a core curriculum in the first year and then let students take whatever classes they want.”</p>
<p>I would support a policy making the first year completely open for exploration (across all fields) and having students commit to a major at the end of the year. </p>
<p>Actually, I would even support first-year distribution requirements that force students to take classes in both the liberal arts and vocational or technical fields. Everyone gets exposed to liberal arts in high school but fewer students are exposed to technical fields. Many honors students even seem to look down on the vocational fields, maybe because the vocational classes in high school are targeted at the “dumb” kids who couldn’t cut it in academic subjects/liberal arts. Including vocational courses in the core might open some students’ eyes to the joys and/or practicalities of vocational degrees the same way that the core might ignite a passion in a new liberal arts field.</p>
<p>I got to take a few vocational classes in high school (accounting, graphics design, a CAD class) and I enjoyed them so much that I seriously considered pursuing a technical major instead of a liberal arts major. I don’t think vocational or technical majors are inferior to liberal arts majors in any way, and they deserve to be part of the core.</p>
<p>I think the entire system of undergraduate education should be reconsidered. Here’s how I would do it:</p>
<p>Skills like carpentry, auto repair, and plumbing would be part of the standard college curriculum.</p>
<p>The liberal arts would be taught as a two year study of 75 - 100 books drawn from various disciplines (philosophy, beginning with Plato and moving forward; religion; literature, once again moving chronologically from antiquity to present; history, consisting of broad surveys of the history of all parts of the world, a more in-depth study of Western history, and a general overview of historiographical method; sociology; anthropology; etc.).</p>
<p>Science and Mathematics would also be compulsory, with courses up to and including Calculus, along with Physics, Biology, Astronomy, Geology, and Chemistry, and History of Science all required for a degree.</p>
<p>Study of a foreign language up to the level of a basic literature course in chosen language.</p>
<p>Upon completion of this course of study students would receive a combined BS/BA. If the student wishes to focus more specifically on a particular subject, this would be done in a Masters program.</p>
<p>^Whatever happened to high school education? </p>
<p>Honestly folks, most kids are bored by academics. I don’t blame them. Interests and passions almost never fit into a pre-packaged academic subject. Begin to understand this, and you’ll understand why such a plan would never work. Pushing even more general education onto students is futile.</p>
<p>Who cares if kids are “bored by academics.” Education shouldn’t be designed to entertain people. If someone doesn’t want to learn, don’t go to college. </p>
<p>As for “whatever happened to high school education,” the curriculum I’ve outlined above would be far more in-depth. Considering most students graduate from high school as near-illiterates, I think an intensive study of these disciplines is vital for producing an educated citizenry.</p>
Seriously? I went to high school overseas. I studied Latin, philosophy, sociology and geology in high school. Calculus was required for graduation. If you want to reform the school system, I would start with middle or high school, not college.</p>
<p>So education should be boring and only available to those at the college level? Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for success.</p>
<p>If you actually cared about students learning, you’d realize that the “joy of learning” has nothing to do with “entertainment.” You can keep your centuries-old rote broken education model, thanks.</p>
<p>Education doesn’t necessarily have to be boring. But if you only teach students things that fill them with the “joy of learning”, how is that in any way a good education? For that matter, since most people would rather do a lot of things over any kind of learning, how would you even do that?</p>
<p>As already stated: Broad-based mandatory education belongs in middle school and high school. Making kids drag on through another 4 years of subjects they don’t care about doesn’t help anyone. The solution is to spark an interest in subjects that matter to the student – in high school. It’s a bit tough to ignite interest in a college math class when the previous 12 years were filled with poorly-taught math courses. </p>
<p>If you think the current educational system (high school and post-secondary) is effective or efficient, you’re delusional.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s effective or efficient, no. What I don’t have is any better system. Relying on students to have some interest sparked in them is not that, because the vast majority of high school students don’t care enough.</p>
<p>I would say that general eds need to be toned down a tad in college, but of course, that can’t happen because our high school system is NOT succeeding. College writing should certainly stick as a gen ed. Then a humanities/social sciences class. Then a science class. And then maybe I’d utilize statistics as the required math class, which an earlier poster seemed to like as well. Schools beef up their core curriculum way too much, in my opinion. Honestly though, why can’t high school students learn to write on a COLLEGE level before they get there? It’s ridiculous that the colleges they go to have to teach them how. You should be able to write and communicate properly before you get to college. What is high school doing? What is it accomplishing? What was it meant to accomplish, in a historical context?</p>
<p>My biggest problem with general education is the fact that we have to pay so much for it. There’s experimenting with different subjects to see what you might be interested in and then there’s paying tens of thousands of dollars to experiment with different subjects. Schools can say all they want to about how general education benefits the student and helps them gain more knowledge in different subjects and helps them decided on majors- the truth is general education will mean thousands of more dollars students owe to the school. </p>
<p>That’s why I took those classes at a community college. It makes me sick to think of being that much in debt for the point of taking basic math, science, and English classes.</p>