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<p>Only too true. But schools which force kids to take a year of “Rocks for Jocks” (geology) or “Physics for Poets,” “Think Green” or similar courses do a better job of educating students than those which don’t, according to Professor Lewis. He’s wrong, IMO.</p>
<p>My D hates science–absolutely HATES it. D had to take two science courses. Took a broad, introductory course in environmental science. The class had two textbooks. She never BOUGHT one, let alone read it. Class met 2x a week and had a section once a week. She never went to lecture; she did go to section and made a point of talking a lot. Got an A --and had the third highest grade on the final. I KNOW how little work she did, so I can’t imagine how little work most of the kids in the class did. </p>
<p>I saw the final and saw red. It was easier that the final in the required environmental science unit she took in 7th grade. I said that I wasn’t paying big bucks for her to take silly, easy courses. She had to take a REAL science course for her other science credit.</p>
<p>Then a wonderful thing happened. A biologist and a philosopher team taught a course in the ethical issues raised by the Human Genome project–yes, this was a few years back. You could get either humanities OR science credit for taking the course. If you wanted science credit, you had to take and pass a mid term and final written by the biologist. For philosophy credit, you had to write a philosophy paper as the midterm and take a final exam written by the philosophy prof. </p>
<p>Yes, the focus of the class was narrow, so it would flunk Prof Lewis’s “quality” test. I assure you that the biology component of the class was at a much, much higher level than the intro to environmental sciences class. My D learned a heck of a lot about human DNA and its sequencing. She remembers much more from the class because the science that was taught raised ethical questions and how a society sets ethical norms is an area of special interest to my kid. </p>
<p>From what she said, the class discussions were amazing. There were all these sciency kids who would have been bored out of their minds in an introductory philosophy course reading Descartes who really appreciated the chance to study ethical issues that they could see themselves actually facing. And there were all these humanities kids and social studies policy wonk kids who learned enough science to actually understand what was at stake. These were kids whose paths rarely had crossed in the classroom. </p>
<p>Now, this kind of “narrow” class is just what Prof Lewis condemns. The introductory environmental science course is one he includes on his list. </p>
<p>Switching gears, Brown and other schools with no core requirements get criticized as “easy.” But, believe it or not, more Brown humanities students take REAL science courses than at most other schools. The difference is they take them S/NC–Brown speak for pass /fail. Because they CAN take them pass/fail and if they fail they just don’t show up on the transcript, they take REAL science courses. Maybe not the hardest science courses, but they at least sit in the intro science courses with the pre-meds–and know that doing so won’t hurt their gpas. Any day in the year, I’d rather have my kid take a REAL science course on a pass/fail basis than take a “joke” class and get an A.</p>
<p>So, I just don’t accept Lewis’s reasoning. IMO, we should encourage kids to take classes in other fields, but we should do it in such a way that kids are allowed to take courses that have relevance for their interests, not broad introductory courses for which they will have forgotten 90% of the course material within six months of the final.</p>