<p>Let's say UVA out of state summer tuition is a tad too expensive when they provide little summer financial aid and that made me turn to a local CC. Haha I wasn't prepared for the culture shock.</p>
<p>No math past calculus II.
Barely any vocational training, but on the other hand, the schedule is full of stuff like "hiring a business coach" or "office procedures".</p>
<p>But this one takes the cake: a class on "bioenergy and natural healing". How did this get offered again?</p>
<p>I guess it really depends on the type of CC?</p>
<p>Universities teach classes on religion when no one can prove god exists. If a community colleges can make money by making a class on some other arbitrary unprovable facts then why not?</p>
<p>Except the religion isn’t generally taught as truth. Evolutionary science views religion as a memetic virus. And any school that teaches intellient design as truth ought to lose its accreditation.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for math past calc II and are apparently ok with community college, you can take courses online. If you have VA residency, North Virginia Community College has diff eq’s, vector calc, linear algebra, and discrete math this summer. If the calculus stuff was just an example I just wasted my time looking up a bunch of courses.</p>
<p>Religion departments in most universities (exclude Liberty U, Brigham Young, Bible colleges/universities, etc.) are first and foremost humanities discipline. It is a serious academic inquiry and study.</p>
<p>I agree that at most schools, religion is a humanities study, not unlike music or history. It’s not taught as truth and it definitely isn’t preached (well… I can think of a couple of exceptions). That’s fine with me. What bothers me is when this creationism crap gets into our science classrooms. You can believe in it if you’d like, but because it can’t be tested using the scientific method (and either can intelligent design, although at least there have been a few feeble attempts), it’s not SCIENCE.</p>
<p>If people want to learn about it, what’s the problem?</p>
<p>It’s not like you’ll need to know about 16th century English Lit, Roman Civ, or Fluid Dynamics in whatever job you do. Of course, you will probably use some of the information from classes, but the vast majority you won’t.</p>
<p>College teaches you about indepence, personal responsibility, and time management. Employers don’t nearly care as much about classes as most of CC would want them to.</p>
<p>TBH, the 50 Cent class sounds pretty fun. I’d totally take it as an elective.</p>
<p>Because “natural healing” is a pseudoscience and is not even a real vocation?</p>
<p>Dude, I have no problem with people learning <em>actual</em> healing techniques. First aid, intravenuous or subcutaneous drug administration, hell, massage …</p>
<p>And I mean actual, keep-it-real massage, not “unblock your natural energy flow” massage. Bioenergy doesn’t exist. Vitalism was invented by ancient “healers” who didn’t know anything about the electron transport chain, or genetics, or protein reaction kinetics, or any organic chemistry. There are no chi pathways. There are however, gap junctions between cells, but the only energy that gets exchanged between them is ATP, glucose, NADPH, oxalate, and other fun energy carriers. </p>
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<p>Fluid dynamics is pretty useful for biomedical professions actually. Heat dissipation, flow of nutrients within cells, between cells (gap junctions), through axons and through the circulatory system.</p>
<p>And 16th century English falls under historical linguistics; ongoing research into the evolution of language (big and small l) provides various mathematical models shared with evolutionary bio and ecology.</p>
<p>Of course people are working on and researching for almost any class you can take in college. You’re still missing the point: college classes don’t have to be vocational.</p>
<p>I agree that a lot of those classes are ridiculous, but if people sign up for it, more power to them.</p>
<p>It totally depends on your CC. The CC I went to teaches up to Multivariable Calculus but in addition you got all the vocational/community courses like auto teach, culinary, hvac, and my personal favorite, history of rock music!</p>
<p>Learning about bioenergy and natural healing is not enriching. Any positive effects of such quackery have been shown to be mostly due to psychological confidence of the patient and the placebo effect.</p>
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<p>The problem is that this CC is accredited. </p>
<p>An accredited school should not be teaching pseudoscience.</p>
Sure it does. According to Wiki, the ultimate source of knowledge:
So it covers important stuff like waste management, biomass fuels, and even climate change! Not a useless subject. I agree the “Healing” aspect sounds stupid, but maybe they teach it like Religion - not as fact, but as theory? As long as the CC continues to profit off of it, they will continue to teach it. </p>
<p>We live in a superstitious country where many reject the godless-heathen scientists out of suspicion. In some American HS’s, run by the Govt, evolution isn’t even taught but I bet “intelligent design” is discussed. This “Healing” class isn’t a big deal at all. You’ve been sheltered by going to a good college full of intelligent people and being surrounded by scientists and potential scientists. Trust me, I can relate. :)</p>
<p>“Except the religion isn’t generally taught as truth. Evolutionary science views religion as a memetic virus. And any school that teaches intellient design as truth ought to lose its accreditation.”</p>
<p>Placebo effect can be awfully powerful, surpassing what modern medicine can do sometimes. Why is that not enriching? </p>
<p>And say it has no ‘practical’ impact, how is learning bioenergy theory any different from learning interpretation theory, a subdiscipline of… English I believe?</p>