<p>That's quitely interesting: we pronounce it "mangrove throat-warbler."</p>
<p>My personal favorite is "You are High", aka the University of Rhode Island. High of course, referring to the drug induced state, but I enjoy the slight reference to my sister's comments that going there would be high school all over again, because that's where pretty much everyone goes.</p>
<p>"My personal opinion is that everyone with a liberal arts education should have math through the equivalent of Calc AB and Intro Stats. There's too much of the world you can't make proper sense of without it" (DAD)
I loved calculus and find statistics useful but why would you require this at a college like Smith. There are schools which require these courses (usually large state universities) and as mini says high schools require core courses. If Smith requires calculus of all majors, they should require philosophy, psychology, poetry, bioethics,world religions and public speaking. How is calculus better poised to make proper sense of the world than philosophy or poetry? Why is calculating more important than speaking? (or painting, dancing or sculpting?)</p>
<p><strong>How is calculus better poised to make proper sense of the world than philosophy or poetry? Why is calculating more important than speaking? (or painting, dancing or sculpting?)</strong></p>
<p>LOL, very good point. :-)</p>
<p>I think we just all have a bias about what is <em>most</em> important in trying to make sense of the world. Thank goodness for me (and my housemates) that Smith doesn't require calculus -- I wouldn't bomb it, but I would be one miserable person to live with.</p>
<p>Because there are certain foundations without which wide areas of knowledge and understanding are foreclosed to you. Literacy and numeracy, for two. If you don't have a class in bioethics, or public speaking, or dance, or world religions, there may be a hole in your knowledge but it doesn't affect your fundamental ability to process the world, leaving you the analog of being color blind.</p>
<p>Well.... I agree with you on many things, but we do disagree on this one. I don't feel that my lack of a knowledge of calculus has left me at a disadvantage in my fundamental ability to process the world.</p>
<p>I do think we all have our biases. If I had to choose one course to require every student to take from the "mathematics and analytical philosophy" catagory currently required for Latin Honors, my own bias would force me to choose "Valid and Invalid Reasoning" </p>
<p>For me, coming from a background in a highly technical field, the ability to think and reason logically is the one thing REALLY required to understand how things function (or don't) in the world and the one thing that far too many people do not possess. Not that I don't think calculus is important, but if we're looking at core reqs. in a liberal arts education, not important enough to require every student to take it at the expense of other things they will then not be able to take.</p>
<p>'sokay, Laurel. Disagreements make the world go around. Heck, I don't even agree with myself all the time.</p>
<p>Invalids have problems reasoning when they're in pain.</p>