Fri 30 Nov 2007
In the WNY thread we recently had some argument over the usefulness of Williams’ requirements for graduation, namely the Quantitative Reasoning (QR) and Intensive Writing (IW) instituted in 2001, and the Foreign Language (FL) proposed but rejected then.
Not discussed as often is a fourth proposal then, that missed 2/3 acceptance by one vote: a Public Speaking (PS) requirement.
I’d like to reopen the debate on this issue. Should Williams have requirements for graduation beyond 32 classes and a major? David takes the con side of this.
For this argument, I’ll go pro for public speaking and division requirements but con for others. Prior comments show that others will take pro more generally, supporting FL if not other requirements. My opening points are below, and I’d love for others to join the discussion on this critical topic.
I argue that Williams must first ensure that it has a good product before it requires every student to buy it. My reasons for this are twofold:
- The more obvious one is that a person’s ability to choose what is best for himself should only be impinged in the name of a good when we are pretty sure we can actually serve that good.
- Less obvious I think is that when you require every student to take a certain kind of class, you put that class type under a kind of assault as some of those classes now shift to accommodate people who are there mostly to fulfill the requirement. The affected courses must be ready for this, and strong to begin with. By “strong” I mean “very good at improving selected student skills.”
I argue that the QR and IW requirements are bad products. This is not at all to say that the bulk of the classes that satisfy these requirements are “bad,” but I assert that the college, in creating the concepts of QS and IW created a kind of brand, and this was (in my time at least) a very weak brand. I won’t even touch the People’s and Cultures (PC) requirement (but go ahead and ask a few profs and students to tell you what makes something eligible for this brand).
In sum, I charge the college with imposing a modest burden on students without having, through them, a strong path to the improvement of the students, and while (possibly) weakening of the classes that draw students who would previously have avoided them.
If there is enough interest in this thread, I will present my case for the current divisional and proposed public speaking requirements.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:42 am
1) Since there isn’t a good case to be made for the current divisional (2D3 — for 2 courses in each of the three Divisions) or for public speaking (PS), I would like to see you try to make one, perhaps in separate threads.
2) I think that you forget a third item in your (excellent) list.
3. New requirements should only be implemented if they actually make a positive difference.
One reason why the IW requirement is stupid is that Williams students already learned to write before 2001. It was virtually impossible to graduate without writing lots and lots of papers. Now, Williams can always work on improving students writing. Williams professors can always give more feedback. But the 32 class requirement (and generally high standards in Williams classes), in and of itself, already ensured that students learned to write. In other words, students after 2001 do not learn how to write any better than those before 2001, so the requirement is useless.
4) Anyone at Williams who is interested in something like a PS requirement, should start by implementing one in their own department. That would provide a useful test case and demonstration.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Way to make a blanket statement with no supporting evidence whatsoever.
November 30th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Acknowledge public speaking skills as valuable. Department by department, the faculty could try to incorporate public speaking into course and other offerings. Don’t add it as a separate requirement.
That’s what I’d like to see.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Wonder if there is still a Van Vechten Speaking Prize, I believe that was the name. I won it Sophomore year which begin a much needed restoration of the self confidence which had been drained by weak Freshman grades. As it turned out, the Prize was not enough to restore me to the straight A levels I had enjoyed in a far less demanding secondary school program. Turned out that study and application was required for a decent average, even in the olden days. Maybe particularly in the pre grade inflation olden days.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:16 am
David–I would agree that 95% of students learned how to write before 2001. However, for the 5% of students who didn’t, I think the writing requirement probably is very effective. Now, you might argue that it is not worth imposing requirements on 95% of the student body to help 5% of students. I completely agree. However, I think that probably very few students change what classes they are going to take to fulfill WI (my guess would be that virtually all of the 95% who were learning how to write pre-2001 were also and continue to meet that requirement without trying).
November 30th, 2007 at 11:51 am
CE, your point about the existence of the 5% is probably true, but how you describe IW currently makes my point for me. Yes, most students don’t have to alter their course plans to get an IW in. This is a symptom of a problem, not a good thing: if IW classes actually uniformly tackled writing improvement for the 5% you describe, I and many other students would have had to alter our plans to take such a class. It is the fact that IW is a weak brand that often does not actually specifically target writing improvement that permitted me to take it easily.
To illustrate my point: I submit that a proper IW class cannot possibly achieve its goal with only one prof-criticized writing assignment. I highly doubt it can do it with fewer than four, in fact. Length of these assignments is far less important.
The standard today, however, is 20 pages of writing, total. Check out the ‘06-’07 list of IW classes. I see some ENGL 300s in there. Do we really think that’s a good place to address the 5%? Without harming the rigor of the class?
How about THEA 322(F) Performance Criticism? What does the prof of this class do if he gets one of the 5%? What happens when basic writing issues doom the more complicated communication needs a student has in such a class?
If IW were what it should be, excellent writers might in fact not take an IW by choice. They might be great science writers, in fields where IW is not in the required major path. Or they may be students who want to primarily write long papers and not the many shorter assignments in a good IW.
Instead we lost the mission to dilution. We couldn’t agree on enough particulars of what an IW should look like. We decided to require everyone and thus we got worried about imposing something on everyone that was too structured, and so we lost the chance to have a useful structure, denoted by a brand.
I was an English major and a writing tutor. My father was a JHS English teacher. This topic, to me, is not just academic.
Learning to write at college time is learning to do something that apparently did not come naturally to you. You need to be forced to do something that you’ve probably avoided to a degree your whole life. Overcoming what a students hogh school past did not is no small task for a professor. Not every Williams prof is motivated to do this, or good at it, or philosophically behind it, and it shows in the execution of IW.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
“Should Williams have requirements for graduation beyond 32 classes and a major?”
It does: a swim test and gym classes.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Jonathan nailed it on a lot of important points.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
What an interesting post. But to contribute to it in a significant way, would be easier for me had I better Quantitative Reasoning and Writing skills. My fluency in 2 other languages serves me not at all here.
Everyone has different strengths. Coming up with a set of requirements that aid in the process of finding and enhancing those strengths should be key at a four year school. Great reasoning and writing skills enhance the ability to learn and contribute. They make for a more dynamic individual, classroom, work place, home.. blog site etc. etc. They should be focused on and required in order to make the most of all learning.
Not having those particular skills (to the degree that many of you ephs exhibit!) hasn’t had a terrible impact on my life. I love my work and feel that I contribute meaningfully in the doing of it. But, their absence has hampered me enough that I will advocate for a focus on learning them.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I thought having a significant number of prof-graded assignments was a requirement for (W) classes? If not, it still seems to be the de facto standard.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
anon 12:39: I thought of the swim test, and thanks for mentioning the PE requirement. Looks like this thread might have enough interest, and I plan to post on these two requirements too. We are arguing the philosophy behind requirements in general, so it is very fair to examine each one.
If you’re interested in this topic, what would you like to discuss next?
Public Speaking
Division Distribution
PE and Swimming
November 30th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
If all Williams requirements are worthy of reexamination, then so are their obverse - prohibitions.
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
I would start with divisional, but who he starts the discussion picks the topic. Being of little mind, I am consistent in my opposition to all three. Individual courses should be more rigorous, i.e., get rid of science guts by requiring departments to allow all courses to count for the major. Perhaps some departments need more rigor as well. (Certainly, political science should have a quantitative requirement.)
But as long as courses and departments are up to snuff, then 32 courses plus a major are enough.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:48 am
Jonathan–point taken.
David–32 courses plus a major would allow a student to graduate only taking, say, bio, chem, and a few physics classes. How is requiring those sorts of students to take an english/philosophy/econ class or two a bad thing?
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
The requirement is stupid because:
1) It is unnecessary. Even without it, the vast majority of students would take a least two courses in each division. (I think that a study showed this in the early 80’s before the requirement was voted in, but I could be imagining it.)
2) Many of those who would choose not to meet it have, in fact, met it in spirit already. If you participate in singing groups and theatre, then you are getting plenty of Div I wonderfulness even if you take no courses. If you took Math and Physics AP classes in high school, then you have had more then enough exposure to Div III.
3) Those who the requirement would impinge on and who haven’t met it in spirit anyway, are a small percentage of all students. Almost certainly less than 5%. Why torture them? The vast majority are probably those who don’t like math and science. Do you really think that forcing them to take CHEM 101 makes them a better, smarter person? I doubt it. If by age 18, you hate Division III stuff so much that you wouldn’t want to take a single course, then a requirement isn’t going to change things.
4) And, even if it did, Williams does not force people to take CHEM 101. It provide a selection of ridiculous science guts that such students use to fulfill their Division III requirements. Think that forcing people to do science guts, rather than real science, is good for them? No way.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
First of all, Williams in the 80s is not that similar to Williams today. I would be very surprised if, when surveyed today, just about all Williams students responded that they took at least one course they otherwise would not have taken because of the divisional requirement (I would also guess that very few of these would ultimately respond that they regretted that afterwards, either).
Yes, David, just about all Williams students have taken both science and humanities classes in High School. However, for the majority of students at Williams, their high school classes very rarely resembled a college course in any way.
I was one of those students–I took AP bio and AP calc in high school and received 5s on both tests. However, I was a Div1-Div2 double major and I would probably have taken no Div3 classes had the requirement not been in place. Sure, I wasn’t totally thrilled about taking those Div3 classes, but I’m very very happy I had to take them–having graduated now, I feel that my college experience is much better rounded than it was before.
Now, if you want to argue that AP credit can be used to fulfill divisional requirements, that might make some amount sense. Personally, I don’t think that AP success signifies a preparation for Williams classes (I worked my ass off in Bio and Calc 105 and got respectively the second lowest and the lowest grades of my college career), but such grades do reflect some limited amount of exposure to the subject.
Furthermore, I think it’s idiotic to think that somehow participating in singing groups or theatre is comparable in just about any way to taking philosophy of sports or an English course on Darwin (two of the more obviously “targeted” d1s and d2s I’ve seen).
As it is, I know people who took a course only to fulfill a divisional requirement, and ended up majoring/concentrating in that subject. Sure, the total number may only be 1-2 a year or even 1-2 every couple of years, but I would be very surprised if the number of students who are happy that they took some courses because of the divisional requirement is not greater than 50.
Basically, David, I think if you went back and saw what the classes are actually like, you might change your mind. There are a very very small handful of classes at Williams that classify as “guts” as you seem to describe them, and are by no means exclusively used to fulfill requirements. Probably a lot of the classes that you might identify as “guts” (chem of forensics, chem of aids, philosophy of sports, oceanography…) are very much legit classes that do teach “real” science, philosophy, econ, etc, as well as very important concepts. Sure, Philosophy of Sports may not give students the same foundation for a future study of philosophy as Phil 102 might, but Chem majors don’t need that foundation. What Phil of Sports gives these students–a very solid introduction to a philosophical way of thinking–is (I think) a more important part of a liberal arts education than the knowledge of what Hume or Kant believe.