What Will They Learn?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I've known about this "ranking system" for a while, but I dismissed it as useless propaganda until I completed my Harvard tour, when it really struck home. This is the "Letter from the Dean" below. Know that he was the Dean of Harvard College for several years.</p>

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It’s been years since I’ve seen the sort of Chinese restaurant menu that required choosing one dish from Column A and one from Column B. It didn’t give you complete freedom, but it was a lot of fun to join your dinner companions in making crazy combinations of things that didn’t actually go that well together.</p>

<p>Those menus may be gone from restaurants, but they are alive and well at our colleges—not in the cafeteria, but in most course catalogs. There, the requirements that are supposed to make sure your kids receive a well-rounded education often simply call for one course in the humanities, one course in social science, and so on. On some campuses, it doesn’t matter at all what courses are chosen, as long as they are in the right categories. Other schools limit the courses so that they meet some special criteria, but there is little sense of how each individual course relates to the others.</p>

<p>The venerable and honorable notion of “general education” has, in other words, been reduced to a game. Students have to work their way through a vast menu of general education requirements, and do their best to find courses that fit the various categories as well as their schedules. </p>

<p>This is deplorable indeed. At its best, general education is about the unity of knowledge, not about distributed knowledge. Not about spreading courses around, but about making connections between different ideas. Not about the freedom to combine random ingredients, but about joining an ancient lineage of the learned and wise. And it has a goal, too: producing an enlightened, self-reliant citizenry, pluralistic and diverse but united by democratic values.</p>

<p>It is in that spirit that I welcome you to WhatWillTheyLearn.comSM and urge you to use it as a resource.</p>

<p>If I may, let me draw your particular attention to one area. Many studies have shown that our college graduates are ignorant of the basic principles on which our government runs. For starters, most cannot identify the purpose of the First Amendment, what Reconstruction was, or the historical context of the Voting Rights Act. If you peruse this website, you will see why: the vast majority of our colleges have made a course on the broad themes of U.S. history or government optional. This is especially dangerous in America, where nothing holds us together except our democratic principles. If universities don’t pass them down, our children will not inherit our nationhood genetically. They can receive that heritage only through learning. That’s one key reason that during the college search you must ask: what will they learn?</p>

<p>With good guidance, students can get the holistic educational experience almost anywhere. But good guidance is hard to come by, and these days, the menus don’t help very much. That’s why I hope this resource will help you find out which of the colleges you and your children are considering are taking care to provide an education…and which are just offering a menu.</p>

<p>Harry R. Lewis
Former Dean, Harvard College

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<p>TLDR? Kids are getting away with doing too little, and substituting tough classes with a bunch of crap. (My Harvard tour guide loved the idea that the science requirement could be substantiated with a "Cooking and Science Course" for kids who aren't scientifically oriented).</p>

<p>He gives Harvard a D.</p>

<p>"A</a>" List - What Will They Learn?</p>

<p>Those are the "A-List" schools. With the exception of a few (St. John's, service academies) I doubt they can actually compete with the Ivies academically, but it just shows how easily people can get away with nothing nowadays.</p>

<p>More than ever it strikes me that an Ivy education is not but a signal to employers, more than any worthwhile education (unless you force yourself to make the most of it).</p>

<p>I know many of you will have the same reaction I had when I first saw it. It does show, however, that these "liberal arts" colleges will allow students to more or less stay only in their comfort zone, completing courses that only cater to their own major.</p>

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<p>Well, I believe that the learning is done by the student. If they are willing to pay 50k a year to get a mediocre education by picking College Algebra over Differential equations, let it be. Nothing is ever handed to you in a silver platter. I believe that you must seize the opportunity and take it. I think more choices are better. It let’s you decipher the more motivated students above the others.</p>

<p>Also, the criteria are based on required classes. I highly doubt that they even show the quality of the schools.</p>

3

<p>I agree with you completely. A student who wishes to make the most of what he has at Harvard will get more than he would at a State university. </p>

<p>The concern is that too many students are forsaking the liberal education, or just difficult classes, by taking random classes, even at the best. These students, thus, are not really reflective of a Harvard education, but a shadow of itself.</p>

<p>As such, it makes me think that Harvard and its creed are just signalling to employers a phantom level of skill, in turn this becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy of such graduates becoming actually more proficient, but only because of the original signal provided by this degree.</p>

<p>That being said, if the situation at Harvard was enough to irk its own dean, I would disagree with the notion that it is just any random study. And it does not measure the quality of the school, but the level of learning of the students.</p>

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<p>So a school which requires a course in each of those 7 categories isn’t subjecting students to this “game” but one which doesn’t require anything is? </p>

<p>I don’t get it, someone explain it to me like I’m 4. I go to one of those ignorant schools where we play games.</p>

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<p>At first glance, this seems like a good idea. However, after looking into it, some of the categories are limited and the assessment is shallow. The most glaring omission is the complete lack of any world history requirement; this organization seems to take a US-centric view, stating that US citizens need to focus on US history. However, we are humans first, and it is the endeavors of mankind all throughout human history that have built our world as it is.</p>

<p>I’ll try to assemble a schedule that meets their requirements:</p>

<p>English Comp I
American Lit I
Spanish I
US History I
Microeconomics
Math for Lib Arts
Geology for non-science majors</p>

<p>Again, I think it’s a fairly good idea, they just need some reworking. I’ll give them a…</p>

<p>B-</p>

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<p>Of course, this is stuff that students should have learned in typically required high school US history and civics courses.</p>

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<p>I love the idea of new and additional ways by which folks can compare universities. So this website is kinda cool.</p>

<p>But it seems rather silly as it just covers what could be covered in one year of coursework. What about the rest? Moreover, it leaves out as one other suggested world history. And I’d like to know where social science fits (I actually think econ is great, but its so not sociology or psychology for example). Where is a critical thinking course? And college level statistics? And why are the ‘arts’ courses pre-specified- a language, composition, US history…but science is just all lumped together as just one course?! Talk about bias. Let me guess the background of this former Dean. Finally, he goes on about integration vs. drawing from a hodgepodge menu…but where is the integration here? It’s just another list of courses imho. </p>

<p>Though having said all that, I do like another way to judge schools and the food for thought this provides. I’d love to see other takes on the same problem, with different solutions.</p>

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<p>The whole exercise is basically rating the schools on the basis of what Lewis thinks should be the breadth or general education requirements at a university. Probably many readers here would disagree on what the breadth or general education requirements should be. Obviously, the schools disagree with each other, since they are all over the map on this.</p>

<p>Also, some prominent schools are absent from the ratings.</p>

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<p>In my view, students should be able to study whatever it is they want to study. The fundamental courses should be covered in high school. How can someone graduate from high school without knowing about the first amendment? How did such a person get into Harvard in the first place?</p>

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<p>I can’t see the value of this site since it tells you whether school’s requirements fit one person’s ideal requirements. In addition to the already mentioned US-centric history view, this site has very specific views on what a good literature course is. Courses based on aspects of literature (the ones that my school uses for core requirements) aren’t considered sufficient.</p>

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<p>Even the most astute students will have “holes” in their education. I recently encountered a top economics graduate (school and rank) who didn’t know what a “leap year” is. </p>

<p>University graduate - not high school.</p>

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<p>I agree completely. College is a time for branching out–for learning about subjects not ordinarily taught in high school, such as anthropology, philosophy, and astronomy (hey, that’s one each from social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences!). It’s also a time for different students to follow different paths. Some will go directly into a professional major, such as nursing, business, or engineering, while others will choose a liberal arts program, and still others will prepare themselves for professional schools, such as medical, law, or veterinary school. I see no need for everyone to study the same thing or to do the high school curriculum over again at a slightly higher level.</p>

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<p>I also question this. Of course, you can create a general education program where the subjects interrelate. The site we’re talking about seems to focus primarily on knowledge that would enhance the student’s ability to be a well-informed American citizen, so of course most of its subjects interrelate. </p>

<p>You could also create an interrelated program with a very different focus. For example, when I was an undergraduate at Cornell in the 1970s, there was an optional core program in which almost all of the general education requirements were fulfilled through an integrated set of courses related to classical (Greek and Roman) civilization. I suspect this would horrify Harry R. Lewis, despite its focus on unity of knowledge in a particular area. </p>

<p>What bothers me is that if you insist that the courses taken to fulfill a general education requirement interrelate, you have to limit students’ choices. And thus, the student who would have been destined to fall in love with anthropology, philosophy, or astronomy, but who has not yet been introduced to these subjects because they are not taught in most high schools, would never have a chance to be exposed to them.</p>

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<p>“such as anthropology, philosophy, and astronomy” #12</p>

<p>Astronomy - class that teaches “leap year” and that is also the “easy class” used by many non-science majors to meet science requirement.</p>

<p>Philosophy - students with an IB Diploma have had two philosophy courses.</p>

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<p>Is there something wrong with Chicago’s core, or any program like that? The purpose of non-vocational education is the broad education. That said, Chicago’s program caters to all vocations, except engineering, despite doing an excellent job with the core requirements.</p>

<p>If this is not the system we want, we might as well follow the European model?</p>

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<p>I’m a big proponent of a liberal arts education meaning (to me) taking a broad range of classes in different disciplines. In my mind nothing beats an Academy education for that: Required classes in history (US and Military), Political Science, Philosophy, Lit, Math, hard sciences, engineering, foreign language (they must have changed the FL requirements at USAFA and USMA since it used to be two years college equivalent required), Psych, and Econ before your even get to your major.</p>

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<p>So?</p>

<p>I don’t think these observations make my point invalid. Most American students are not in IB programs. And the fact that many non-science-oriented students use astronomy courses to fulfill distribution requirements does not mean that astronomy is not a subject worthy of study.</p>

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<p>^^#16</p>

<p>Miriam, I wasn’t attempting to invalidate your comment. The observation re to astronomy was a connection to my previous comment about leap year - I realize it seems irrelevant to a reader who was not present during the live conversation I recently had concerning education and leap year and astronomy and economics.</p>

<p>My children have IB diplomas, so I probably think it is more prevalent than it may be. In fact, I don’t know how many kids in the US have IB Diplomas.</p>

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<p>Where did the concept of liberal arts education come from? It is certainly not European, not Asian.</p>

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<p>The first European universities taught the seven liberal arts. They are Western.</p>

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<p>When was this? The current structure of European universities and colleges is quite different. When did the bifurcation happen?</p>