I'm an English professor, so I'll tackle ya (your argument is snipped at various points for brevity)...
First-Why are General Education requirements balanced in the favor of HSS?
I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but universities arose as theological institutions, in which all the subjects in some way furthered the student's relationship with God's universe. The quadrivium might have been more advanced, but the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) were the bases of all study.
HSS has pointed out, for years, that they teach not only basic knowledge, but life skills. Big whoop. S&E can point out, rightfully, that they do the same thing. Not only do good science courses teach you about the way the world works, from cells to space stations, but it also teaches you similar life skills. Analytical thinking skills, as well as problem solving skills, are demanded by most science courses.
See above. You guys ought to be proud. The hard sciences are less required because in part less people are capable of achieving excellence in them. But the end of all things is still philosophy, at least as far as the original universities were concerned, and that is still true today.
Second-Why the different courses?
UCSD has a course that the TAs refer to, disparagingly, as Physics for Poets, also known as Physics for Non-Science Majors. There's a similar one in every department. Science for people who don't want to learn science. There's no Lower Division History for Science and Engineering Majors, even though there might need to be. There are just Lower Division History courses. Why is it that we need to come up with a special "dumbed down" version of Physics in order to teach them, when we don't need the same treatment from them?
Because you don't need dumbed down courses. We do. Physics is the absolute most difficult major at any respectable university, and it is not for sissies.
I have a Ph.D. in literature but I say without any trepidation that poetry is.
To further the problem, many science students as undergrads took Upper Division courses in the HSS field to fulfill their requirements because they found the topics interesting. I've never met a Humanities major who returned the favor. Why is that, we sometimes wonder?
You take them because you are capable of taking them. The HSS people don't take your courses because they aren't capable.
A common phrase used by science majors to refer to humanities courses, even upper division ones, is "grade boosters", or "GPA boosters". I've met only a few on our side of the line who have ever considered a humanities course difficult when it did not involve a higher level economics or political science course. A lot of physicists dislike some parts of higher economics because they have a method of finding eigenvalues of infinite dimensional matricies that looks very strange to us, among other problems. Similarly, PolySci involves a great deal of game theory, and physicists tend to not be very good at game theory. Notice though that these are problems with the math, not the class.
Hrm. I've lost you. What the hell are you talking about? Stop using such big words.
It's just, from our side of the fence, the ignorance over there looks much worse than the ignorance over here. Hopefully this is just a grass-is-greener issue.
No, it's not. My ignorance is absofuckinglutely huge. I got a "B" in College Algebra and that's the last time I took a math course. It was the hardest course I've ever taken, ever, and I broke my back to get that B, and I was prouder of it than any "A" I ever received in an English course. But honestly, I would be lost in anything more complicated than that. My I.Q. is about 130, but my brain doesn't work that way.
There are very intelligent, dedicated, and reasonable humanities students. I'm positive of this. I think I've even caught glimpses of them from time to time. Problem is, they stay in their offices, and we stay in ours.
That's because we don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Mr. Quantum Mechanics. And, also, because you bring Zima to a keg party.
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Date: 2005-10-01 08:27 am (UTC)First-Why are General Education requirements balanced in the favor of HSS?
I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but universities arose as theological institutions, in which all the subjects in some way furthered the student's relationship with God's universe. The quadrivium might have been more advanced, but the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) were the bases of all study.
HSS has pointed out, for years, that they teach not only basic knowledge, but life skills. Big whoop. S&E can point out, rightfully, that they do the same thing. Not only do good science courses teach you about the way the world works, from cells to space stations, but it also teaches you similar life skills. Analytical thinking skills, as well as problem solving skills, are demanded by most science courses.
See above. You guys ought to be proud. The hard sciences are less required because in part less people are capable of achieving excellence in them. But the end of all things is still philosophy, at least as far as the original universities were concerned, and that is still true today.
Second-Why the different courses?
UCSD has a course that the TAs refer to, disparagingly, as Physics for Poets, also known as Physics for Non-Science Majors. There's a similar one in every department. Science for people who don't want to learn science. There's no Lower Division History for Science and Engineering Majors, even though there might need to be. There are just Lower Division History courses. Why is it that we need to come up with a special "dumbed down" version of Physics in order to teach them, when we don't need the same treatment from them?
Because you don't need dumbed down courses. We do. Physics is the absolute most difficult major at any respectable university, and it is not for sissies.
I have a Ph.D. in literature but I say without any trepidation that poetry is.
To further the problem, many science students as undergrads took Upper Division courses in the HSS field to fulfill their requirements because they found the topics interesting. I've never met a Humanities major who returned the favor. Why is that, we sometimes wonder?
You take them because you are capable of taking them. The HSS people don't take your courses because they aren't capable.
A common phrase used by science majors to refer to humanities courses, even upper division ones, is "grade boosters", or "GPA boosters". I've met only a few on our side of the line who have ever considered a humanities course difficult when it did not involve a higher level economics or political science course. A lot of physicists dislike some parts of higher economics because they have a method of finding eigenvalues of infinite dimensional matricies that looks very strange to us, among other problems. Similarly, PolySci involves a great deal of game theory, and physicists tend to not be very good at game theory. Notice though that these are problems with the math, not the class.
Hrm. I've lost you. What the hell are you talking about? Stop using such big words.
It's just, from our side of the fence, the ignorance over there looks much worse than the ignorance over here. Hopefully this is just a grass-is-greener issue.
No, it's not. My ignorance is absofuckinglutely huge. I got a "B" in College Algebra and that's the last time I took a math course. It was the hardest course I've ever taken, ever, and I broke my back to get that B, and I was prouder of it than any "A" I ever received in an English course. But honestly, I would be lost in anything more complicated than that. My I.Q. is about 130, but my brain doesn't work that way.
There are very intelligent, dedicated, and reasonable humanities students. I'm positive of this. I think I've even caught glimpses of them from time to time. Problem is, they stay in their offices, and we stay in ours.
That's because we don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Mr. Quantum Mechanics. And, also, because you bring Zima to a keg party.