The trouble with Brown (open curriculum yay or nay)

Parents Forum
41

<p>My oldest attended a school with distribution requirements. I think she was able to avoid math in college because of all the math (through Calculus) in HS as well as some other distribution credits. She didn’t find the distribution classes particularly hard, just annoying. She felt it was a waste of her time and money because she would have preferred the class slots for other subjects. Since a BFA has many specific requirements, she needed to take maximum course loads to fit everything else in before graduation. She was determined to study abroad and complete an official minor (6+ classes) in communications and another unofficial minor in (oops, I forget).</p>

<p>My son attends Brown. Although my son is a neuroscience major, he still took a variety of subjects including history, religion, and even poetry. Kids eyes are opened when they are exposed to new ideas and Brown allows them to continue to explore that interest if they so desire. My son has followed up in some areas and moved on in others. But with an open curriculum they aren’t encouraged to simply leave one distribution area and move on to the next one. The open curriculum allows freedom to look around and try things out, rather than blindly filling in the blanks (one history, check, one math, check, one social science, check). BTW, Brown does require kids to take a writing class or perhaps more than one? I’m not sure, but they have to show writing proficiency or something. In any case, I think the open curriculum works because of the types of students that Brown accepts. They are self motivated learners who have SHOWN intiative in owning their education throughout HS. My son chose to take classes outside of HS, during weekends and summers, even in middle school. His siblings thought he was nuts to WANT to go to college on weekends but he was that interested in learning…He will certainly be a lifelong learner. He didn’t follow the “rules” or stated curriculum in HS, either. He convinced the dept heads to allow him to take APs in 10th grade, because he figured out how many classes he wanted to experience and how little time he had to do it all. He has the same attitude about college. He simply doesn’t want to waste any of his slots. </p>

<p>As for the poster who had a bad experience at Brown, it’s too bad your attitude was based on just ONE class. I know my son attended several classes at Yale and the first one (in his major) was a complete dud and he was very disappointed. But he moved on to one or two others and they were much better experiences. Same thing at Columbia. He took 4 classes there senior year of HS and one Physics class was a real dud. </p>

<p>As for my son’s experience so far at Brown, he says kids are in classes they want to be in (he’s never had to choose a class he didn’t want). But like his sister, on occasion, a teacher didn’t live up to his expectations but that’s been the exception. He could have avoided that by shopping better (2 week period to try out classes/professors). He has loved his humanities professors despite being harder than he expected.</p>

<p>My son is currently studying abroad and not taking a single science class. He wants to explore cultural classes, more European in context. As a pre-med student, he’s lucky that his medical school requirements are basically met by the extensive requirements of his science major. But many pre-med students we know do not major in a science. So they must fill both their major requirements and their medical school requirements (about 9 classes). That doesn’t leave them much room for exploration or focus on a second area of interest. If it were me, I wouldn’t want a school to dictate how I should spend those last precious course selections.I would want the ability to choose, the ability to direct MY education.</p>

<p>Another thing, for top academic kids, there may be little difference between an open curriculum and a school with distribution requirements. The kids we know at Brown came in with mostly 5s on maybe 7-10 APs. At other schools, they would basically replace most of the distribution requirements with their APs, essentially creating an open curriculum. UVA basically came out and offered that in their acceptance letter. Same thing at our state schools. So in the end, the students have the same flexibility (some would call it unstructured) at both types of schools if they have the scores. </p>

<p>Some kids will feel more comfortable with a mapped out plan, with structure. NO one says you can’t design a traditional across the board distribution of credits curriculum at a school like Brown. It’s YOUR choice.</p>

42

<p>

I’m not surprised. The open curriculum at Brown is undoubtedly its biggest draw for potential applicants.</p>

43

<p>Good point, mythmom. Had dinner last night with parents of a kid at Columbia who loves the core curriculum, which appears to be about education and socialization (like the first year at Harvard Business School or mandatory military service in the Israeli army). Students and alums all went through the same thing and share the same experience. </p>

<p>Distribution requirements are about education, but not socialization. As you point out, neither may fit a kid who enters college advanced in an area that he/she doesn’t want to study any longer, but wouldn’t trouble someone who just wants to go farther in an area in which he/she is already advanced. </p>

<p>One point of caution from my perspective. I doubt that many AP courses have the depth that a good comparable college course has. The high school courses tend to do more spoonfeeding, whereas the comparable college course places more of the burden of learning on the student. Per my earlier comment, learning how to learn is more important than the substance of any course.</p>

<p>We may be lucky. Cocktail parties are about small talk and we avoid them by not going to benefits (which is the only place these days that people I know stand around with cocktails in hand). However, we have lots of dinner events with fascinating people, perhaps aided by the fact that we live in the Boston area and are plugged into networks with the local universities, consulting firms, and hospitals. Had the president of a local university and a professor at that university over for dinner a week ago. Conversation including thinking about how extensive use of the computer is changing the development of the brain (i.e., if kids forgo knowledge for knowing how to access knowledge and papers become a stitching together of Google searches, do kids fail to learn the kind of deep and/or synthetic thinking that many in the academy value and if so, do we as a society lose that capacity over time?), how to deal with the prevalence and degree of binge drinking that has become common on campuses (this is actually scary and much worse than we, at least, had imagined), and a certain kind of deeply personal novel along with how their kids and ours are doing in the various stages of their lives. At a dinner the weekend before, a computational biologist was talking to my high school junior daughter. She is planning a paper on the link between dietary choices and epigenetics for an AP bio course. He sat down with her and planned out a series of experiments she could do over several years (a bit advanced for a high school junior), but the subject was really interesting. I’d never heard of epigenetics before, but it is fascinating. We also talked about the political economy of health care reform. At another dinner, we were trying to come up with (and failing to do so) a different model for news reporting and distribution and talking about how management must be handled differently in the era of immediate dissemination via email, FaceBook and Twitter. So, I’m there to think and learn.</p>

<p>I’m not sure that any one of core curricula, distribution requirements or open curricula is inherently superior if the goal is to teach people how to learn on their own. I’ve never been involved in a core curriculum, but I’m not convinced that distribution requirements I had to meet in college deeply changed me. I am a math and social science kind of guy. I took two literature courses (including one in which we read all of Shakespeare’s plays – he needed an editor – and had a professor who’d been an actor and would be Hal or Richard or …); two philosophy courses (one in metaphysics, which convinced me that a lot of really smart people had really wasted a lot of their time on a very challenging subject, and one in symbolic logic, which was simple math for me); and a serious physics course (which persuaded me that I was more interested in the world of people but also that while I was good at this stuff, some people have real physical intuition that I do not have). And, I took language courses for a language I can no longer speak or read beyond the rudimentary level. It doesn’t feel like I was transformed by the distribution requirements in any way. I probably would have taken a science course and maybe a philosophy course but would have skipped literature (I like to read it but got nothing out of the courses). </p>

<p>Consistent with mythmom’s assertion, I don’t think I’d be especially different if I’d gone to a school without the requirements. However, I took seven or eight courses that I didn’t get much out of that I might not have taken otherwise. Just think what I might have done if I could have pursued my interests in math, statistics, economics, psychology and policy one or two more levels. An open curriculum doesn’t sound so bad. I can’t comment on whether a core curriculum, with its socializing effects, would have transformed me.</p>

44

<p>Calmom, I don’t mean to be gratuitously harsh when I say that a student who needs distributional requirements to do what he considers the right thing has no business going to a demanding college. I can’t really fathom how a student who thinks he should take courses in a broad range of areas could possibly “forget” that when registration rolls around, and only take courses in one or two areas. What you term the realities of registration have absolutely nothing to do with it, or perhaps you even have it backwards. While scheduling conflicts may make it difficult to take four or five desired courses at once in a single subject matter, opening up the universe of possibilities pretty much guarantees that there will be something worthwhile that works in a particular student’s schedule. </p>

<p>MAJOR requirements force students to take a crappy professor in an 8 am course. Distributional requirements don’t do that (and of course neither do no gen ed requirements). The few times I took courses because I had to meet a gen ed requirement, they were lecture courses with world-famous professors that had earned (and deserved) five-star ratings for entertainment value.</p>

<p>The alcoholism analogy does not seem apt to me. People who know they have a genetic tendency towards alcoholism are wise to avoid alchohol, and wise to avoid cultures that revolve around alcohol. I’m not certain what the curricular equivalent is. Someone who has a genetic tendency to narrow focus? Is that so threatening? Anyway, a potential alchoholic has to get through every hour of every day without drinking – has to make the right choice many, many times, day after day. A potential over-narrow student has to have the moral fiber to sign up for one class per term outside of his comfort zone. That doesn’t seem nearly as difficult.</p>

<p>I think what you want to equate to alcoholism is a tendency to drift. As has been discussed, I don’t think open-distributional-core makes much difference either way for that student (except I think core programs are maybe a little riskier for him, since they promote more delay in focus). Advising is key, and departmental requirements, but the student has to hook up with a department. A student with a tendency to drift perhaps ought to be looking for a program that puts him on a defined track from Day 1, i.e., not the liberal arts model.</p>

<p>(A final word on the alcoholism analogy – It may be apt in this way: It’s fine for a potential alcoholic to avoid putting himself into alcohol-centric environments, like a Vegas casino or a Penn State fraternity. But, ultimately, a potential alcoholic either has to learn to turn down drinks, or to live a radically constrained life. There are elite colleges with much milder alcohol cultures than others, but none where a student isn’t going to be offered alcohol on a regular basis. So a student with a tendency towards alcoholism who isn’t confident that he can turn down drinks repeatedly should not be going to an elite college, either.)</p>

<p>Re: anti-intellectualism at Brown. This is my daughter’s characterization, not mine. The kids I know who have gone there recently – my kids’ friends, of course – seem to me completely in the mode of intellectual, high-achieving, somewhat driven students who could go anywhere (except for a couple of recruited athletes, who were nonetheless perfectly solid). Indeed, some of them turned down arguably more prestigious choices to go there, like Stanford or Columbia. My daughter claims, though, that (not counting the athletes, and a couple of others) they are people who have a lot of ambivalence about school and scholarship, notwithstanding their success to date. I can’t confirm or deny that, except to note that several of them have stopped out for a while during their college careers.</p>

45

<p>Shawbridge: I know you have a lovely wife, but I sure would like to be your date at some of those parties. Hey, I’ll go stag. Bring the wife. I’m sure I’d have fun talking to her too.</p>

<p>JHS: I see your points and overall agree. I wouldn’t have wanted distribution requirements, don’t did have them, and did learn things from those courses. Still it wasn’t much – the sixties, ya know. However, I still do respect my son’s feeling he would drown without structure. He may have been wrong, but the “atmosphere” didn’t feel right to him. He still wanted to know there was someone telling him what to do, at least a little. Immature? You betcha. But I still respect that.</p>

<p>I have agoraphobia too. I always think I’m going to fall off bridges when I drive over them and prefer the tunnel.</p>

<p>Now as a junior, S has outgrown those feelings, is deep into his major, finished with his distribution requirements and would recoil at anyone telling him what to take unless it was the GF. She did pick two of his classes (to be with her.) </p>

<p>Truth be told, Williams’ distribution requirements are so light as to be almost non-existent, but the philosophy was more in keeping with my son when he was 17.</p>

<p>He also avoided Swarthmore because he thought the grading would be too rigorous only to find that Williams is right behind. Haha.</p>

<p>So, yes, people have all sorts of fixed ideas in their heads. Some are correct. Some aren’t. </p>

<p>Amherst, Smith and Brown are all attractive to students who are already self-directed. It’s good that some others want some kind of structure or they’d be totally impossible to get it.</p>

46

<p>As someone above stated, a core is NOT the same as distribution requirements. And each school is so different, both of these terms mean so many different things.
To flip the coin, I think it’s important how the school and the faculty feel about these requirements – have they been revamped recently, is there thought put into the whole purpose and structure of the sequence? Most of these courses ARE designed to teach process, not content, even though the content is there as the outside of the candy bar, if you will – that is, the course may be Intro to X but the faculty KNOWS the point of this course, if you teach it, is to make sure all the students learn to DO X, Y, or Z – write a research paper, or what have you.
If the faculty understand the PURPOSE of a class that many kids take for a distribution requirement (and that’s why sometimes only some are “approved” for those requirements) and if they are enthusiastic about that purpose – and if you recruit the best, most engaging teachers to teach them (in a perfect world), then you have kids who griped about being forced to take philosophy come out of there and say it was one of the best classes they had.</p>

47

<p>Mythmom, I agree with YOU. Kids make all sorts of immature (more like protomature) choices. That’s why we still call them “kids”. Sometimes.</p>

<p>I don’t particularly care whether a kid decides not to apply to Brown because of a poorly-thought-through uneasiness with open curriculum, or whether a different kid decides only to apply to open-curriculum schools because of a similarly poorly-thought-through problem with any gen ed requirements. Both kids will likely have a perfectly good set of college choices (although the open-curriculum fan had better be a very good student). Ditto for criteria such as weather, building style, cafeteria quality, and whether the bathrooms are in the freshman suites or in the hallways.</p>

<p>I DO want to understand those criteria, though, and to understand my reaction to them. I’m past this stage, now, but as a parent, if my kid came to me and said “I need a little more structure than Brown (Amherst, Smith, whatever) offers,” I would say, “I don’t think you are thinking very carefully when you say that.”</p>

48

<p>

I completely agree. The “average” CC student has enough APs to wipe out most distribution requirements at many great universities.</p>

49

<p>

</p>

<p>Not necessarily. </p>

<p>Many top-tier colleges and universities – particularly private ones – do not permit students to use AP credits to place out of distribution requirements. </p>

<p>This does not mean that students have to re-take any courses. It simply means that they need to choose other courses to fulfill their distribution requirements. For example, a student who has AP credit for Psychology would not be expected to take Introductory Psychology over. Instead, the student could fulfill the social science distribution requirement by taking more advanced psychology courses or by taking courses in other social sciences, such as anthropology or economics.</p>

<p>State universities tend to be more willing than top-tier private universities to accept AP credits for distribution. My son, who attended the University of Maryland, was able to use his APs in this way, giving him more flexibility in his schedule. But my daughter, who is at Cornell, could not use her APs to waive any distribution requirements or even the foreign language requirement. The only thing she was able to exempt was one freshman writing course.</p>

50

<p>^ That would be why I said “many great universities”.</p>

51

<p>I realized that, noimagination, but I wanted to make sure that everyone reading the thread understood that policies vary drastically. I wasn’t criticizing you.</p>

<p>My concern was mainly that the person you quoted cited UVA as an example. UVA is unusual in that it’s both a top-tier school and a state school. It follows the state school pattern in terms of allowing students with APs to exempt distribution requirements. But private schools of UVA’s caliber usually do not.</p>

52

<p>mythmom, happy to invite you. I think that the number of interesting people per capita is what makes the Boston area interesting and why we probably still live there despite its magnificent weather. Also, I agree that Williams distribution requirements were pleasantly non-restrictive.</p>

<p>I am going to bow out on this topic because if we leave substance (i.e., does core v. distribution requirements v. open make a difference in whether a kid has the capacity to think and to learn in the future) and turn to perceptions (is it sensible or silly for students to make judgments about colleges based upon their sense of the place), I think we enter another realm where there is a lot of caprice. Typically, but not always, when HS kids are evaluating colleges (something about which they have no expertise), the capricious judgments are probably not well-founded (did I have a nice host for my visit, was it sunny out when I was there, did I attend on April 20th and find everyone smoking weed to celebrate International Marijuana Smoking Day). </p>

<p>But, where I think I may differ from JHS is that some kids may sense they need scaffolding – a support structure of some kind – and may get the sense that such a supportive structure is not there at, say, Brown. Such a judgment may be rational and not reflect poor thinking. Kids – and their parents – may mistake formal structure like distribution requirements for scaffolding like advisors who are really paying attention to kids before they get lost. Where I agree with JHS is that it probably makes sense to ask, “What lies behind your sense that there isn’t enough structure? What kind of structure do you think will be most helpful to you?”</p>

53

<p>I’m a strong believer in a core curriculum for most students, but I’ll certainly agree with previous posters who’ve made the point that many top academic kids have a jumpstart on a solid “liberal arts” education before they get to college. Alas, this is probably not the case for the majority of high school graduates.</p>

<p>Is this discussion about the importance of a liberal arts education? I think it is because that’s what a core curriculum means to me. If so, an essay by Robert Harris may be of interest to some readers here.</p>

<p>It starts this way:</p>

<p>*On the Purpose of a Liberal Arts Education</p>

<p>When they first arrive at college, many students are surprised at the general education classes they must take in order to graduate. They wonder why someone who wants to be an accountant or psychologist or television producer should study subjects that have nothing directly to do with those fields. And that is a reasonable question–Why should you study history, literature, philosophy, music, art, or any other subject outside of your major? Why should you study any subject that does not help to train you for a job? Why should you study computer programming when you will never write a program? Why study logic when all you want to do is teach first grade or be a church organist?*</p>

<p>Some posters talked about the importance of being “life-long learners”, and this is the current phrase in vogue among our public schools. Yet, our K-12 schools and some universities seem to downplay content knowledge typically included in a core curriculum, so this part of Harris’ essay was especially pertinent for me.</p>

<p>II. **A liberal arts education teaches you how to learn. . .
2. The more you learn, the more you can learn. **Knowledge builds upon knowledge. When you learn something, your brain remembers how you learned it and sets up new pathways, and if necessary, new categories, to make future learning faster. The strategies and habits you develop also help you learn more easily.
And just as importantly, good learning habits can be transferred from one subject to another. . .
3. Old knowledge clarifies new knowledge. The general knowledge supplied by a liberal arts education will help you learn new subjects by one of the most common methods of learning–analogy. As George Herbert noted, people are best taught by using something they are familiar with, something they already understand, to explain something new and unfamiliar. The more you know and are familiar with, the more you can know, faster and more easily. Many times the mind will create its own analogies, almost unconsciously, to teach itself about the unfamiliar by means of the familiar. It can be said then, that the liberal arts education creates an improvement of perception and understanding. . . .<br>
4. General knowledge enhances creativity. Knowledge of many subject areas provides a cross fertilization of ideas, a fullness of mind that produces new ideas and better understanding. Those sudden realizations, those strokes of genius, those solutions seemingly out of nowhere, are really almost always the product of the mind working unconsciously on a problem and using materials stored up through long study and conscious thought. The greater the storehouse of your knowledge, and the wider its range, the more creative you will be. The interactions of diversified knowledge are so subtle and so sophisticated that their results cannot be predicted.</p>

<p>[On</a> the Purpose of a Liberal Arts Education](<a href=“http://www.virtualsalt.com/libarted.htm]On”>http://www.virtualsalt.com/libarted.htm)</p>

54

<p>“Many top-tier colleges and universities – particularly private ones – do not permit students to use AP credits to place out of distribution requirements” </p>

<p>Oops. I wasn’t aware of this. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why my son turned down Yale for Brown. In any case, sorry to mislead… </p>

<p>As for the anti-intellectualism question, my son called today from Europe and he said he will be happy to get back to Brown where “everyone is actually interested in learning”. I’m not saying everyone at Brown is the same. Perhaps he just happened to surround himself in Providence with college friends who truly want to be engaged. What he sees is that Brown students seem more concerned with learning than with grading, etc. There is little competition with other students. Kids seem more focused on their own education process than where they stand compared to another student. His friends at other top colleges see the difference in attitude. Some prefer the competitive environment; others don’t. That’s ok. There is no one best school for everyone.</p>

<p>Classes at his University abroad consist of lots of discussion with classmates, which isn’t a bad idea and similar to seminar classes I think at Brown and elsewhere. BUT in his experience, kids at Brown come to class prepared and ready to discuss on a deep level. Their opinions and knowledge adds to education. This doesn’t appear to the the case in a couple of his European classes where kids aren’t as focused on learning as he’s used to. They don’t appear to want to be there, which he says he isn’t used to. So, that’s just HIS experience.</p>

<p>BTW, I don’t think kids leaving a college for a semester or two necessarily means students aren’t interested in learning. It could be the very reason they took time off - to go pursue an interest, do research, travel and experience different cultures firsthand. I expect my son may do that after graduating and before starting med school. In fact, Brown encourages the exploration process.</p>

55

<p>S was ambivalent about the open curriculum. He definitely wanted to focus in depth on his principal interests without bothering with the other stuff, but he also realized he hadn’t learned enough yet to be completely certain about his intended major and distribution requirements could clarify that for him.</p>

<p>My concern with Brown was that it has produced confusion and/or aimlessness in the students we know who’ve attended. They graduate without knowing what to do with themselves (seems like a lot do Teach for America, not out of a desire to teach, but to give themselves time to figure out what to do) or they drop out of school for a while midstream and go off to find themselves in the rainforests of Central America or something.</p>

56

<p>^ I should add that I’m commenting on a limited sample, of course, and that what I’ve noticed could be the result of other elements of campus culture, a career services matter, or other factors not associated with the open curriculum per se.</p>

57

<p>And I know a Brown graduate now in Indonesia on a Fulbright before he starts Med School.</p>

<p>I don’t want to make the Brown parents, students and friends defensive. I would have been very pleased if either of my two had ended up there.</p>

<p>I wasn’t very happy with the offerings of English department as relaying by my young friend, but many of the departments are outstanding.</p>

<p>I think all schools have their Achilles’ heels. DD’s good friend at Yale was heartbroken at being closed out of his major.</p>

<p>I think an open curriculum can be wonderful with good advisement or it can pose problems for kids without direction. A core can provide lifelong knowledge or be stultifying. Distribution requirements can enhance point-of-view or be as see as a Chinese take-out menu: “one from column A, two from column B” type approach.</p>

<p>Let’s hope students get matched up with the optimum situations for them, or if not, most of them are smart, savvy and disciplined enough to make the most of where they end up.</p>

58

<p>

</p>

<p>TheGFG, I wonder whether Brown produces this or selects for it.</p>

<p>There’s something about Brown that may appeal to students who don’t have clear career plans and don’t want to feel pressured into developing them.</p>

59

<p>haven’t read the whole thread, but one thing not mentioned is the impact of an open curriculum and generous add/DROP policy has on gpa. With a 3.6 mean, Brown has one of the highest (if not #1), senior gpa in the nation. Great for grad and professional schools!</p>

60

<p>FWIW—for a core:</p>

<p>[Smith</a> College: Strategic Planning](<a href=“http://www.smith.edu/planning/contact_barz.php]Smith”>http://www.smith.edu/planning/contact_barz.php)</p>

<p>[For</a> a Core | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/node/25096]For”>http://cornellsun.com/node/25096)</p>

<p>[The</a> Case for a Core Curriculum | The Brown University Spectator](<a href=“http://thebrownspectator.com/core-curriculum-brown-university/]The”>http://thebrownspectator.com/core-curriculum-brown-university/)</p>

<p>[Fixing</a> the Anything-Goes Philosophy at Brown](<a href=“http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2008/09/_brown_university_is_famous.html]Fixing”>http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2008/09/_brown_university_is_famous.html)</p>

<p>[Jay</a> Mathews - A Mix of Core Courses - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051700515.html]Jay”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051700515.html)</p>

<p>[Hoover</a> Institution - Daily Report Archives - Our Compassless Colleges](<a href=“http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/dailyreport/archive/9585432.html]Hoover”>http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/dailyreport/archive/9585432.html)</p>