Prof asks for real life input

I am asking for non-Ivory tower feedback and ideas. I am wrestling with college committee work and the revamping of our liberal arts requirements. I feel I am battling a PC tsunami. So I thought I'd ask for some real-world feedback. (Our opinions in the ivory tower can be a bit near-sighted.)

Those of you who are recent graduates, or employers of graduates, let me know if any requirements for multi-cultural or interdisciplinary courses have made you (or your employees) better individuals.

What is multi-cultural? (How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? This is a great example of the addage: the more puny the academic committee question, the more heated the discussion.) What do you think multi-cultural is or should be? A course with more than one culture studied, or one with the appropriate percentage of "minority" content?

What is interdisciplinary? A course with more than one main discipline: such as a combination of psychology and philosophy, art and music, math and physics, history and economics. Does study in this kind of course broaden you as a person and prepare you for the real world?

These requirements can be seen as bureaucratic hoops to jump through to get a course approved, or they can be seen as echoing the needs for a global world.

Please let me know what you think (if you care at all). All FReepers are free to reply as well. I need amunition for the fight!

I'm a recent graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering, so I was fortunate enough not to have to jump through the interdisciplinary bureaucratic hoops. I found it invaluable to only have to fulfill a generic number of credit hours in the humanities, which allowed me to focus them on things that I thought would be beneficial to me after graduation. Most of those credit hours were spent on Mandarin Chinese, which I now use for my job in China.

I also very fondly remember a course in "Literature of Persuasion." Students in the course examined the arguments of several famous persuasive works, including Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" and Virginia Woolfe's "A Room of One's Own." (I was fortunate enough to take this course under a professor who had grown up behind the Iron Curtain, and was therefore not enamored of Communism.) It has been very useful to me to understand how these arguments are framed, and also to be able to write my own persuasive works.

As an engineer, my personal education was very heavy on Math and Science. I never took a class in any fine art, although I did make time in my free time to join an extra-curricular concert choir. I would urge you strongly to keep this sort of personal freedom in mind,as many students are keen to enrich themselves in unique ways. However, while I valued the freedom to shape my own liberal arts curriculum, I can also see how a faithful Alma Mater would wish to make certain that its students receive a proper education even if the students will not expand their own horizons. With that in mind, I'll endeavor to answer your questions as faithfully as I can.

What is Multi-Cultural?That is the simplest question to answer, so I'm glad that you asked it first. History and language are the only true "Multi-Cultural" subjects. Every culture has a history, and every culture has a language, and the interaction of cultures is what creates history and language. Multiple invasions of an island in the North Atlantic led to the English language, but it would be a rarity today to find a student who knows why the "Romance languages" are grouped together, or what happened in 1066 AD. To add a "Multi-Cultural" aspect to the curriculum, students ought to learn history or a language, rather than have a "Multi-Cultural" aspect mixed into another discipline. One cannot avoid learning about another culture when one leans history or a language. This is the only way for a student to grasp foreign culture. Any other attempt is nonsense.

"Minority content" is garbage. Either the subject is relevant, or it isn't. Teach about Dredd Scott and Chinese railroad workers not because they represent ethnic minorities, but because of their impact on American history. These people don't matter, minority or not, without the events surrounding them.

What is Interdisciplinary?

This one is a little harder to answer. I would expect that interdisciplinary courses would combine multiple distinct disciplines, such as History of Mathematics, or Logic(Mathematical and Philosophical.) "Interdisciplinary" really is a word used only in academia. Its sole purpose seems to be in order to narrow the mind, and confine things to disciplines, rather than to broaden it. Truthfully, everything is interdisciplinary, because people take what they learn with them. Professors do not start with a tabula rasa when they begin their lectures. I spent three afternoons a week in my final semester in college going from a Computer Science lecture on Advanced Artificial Intelligence to a Psychology lecture on Human Perception, and using what I learned in one to examine the other. As long as students study different disciplines, they will get an interdisciplinary education.

At the college level, the education really is what a student makes of it, and so, in my opinion, the less structure required, the better.

All that said, I feel compelled to get up on my soapbox and say what I think would be the ideal way for students to get a proper education:

In the freshman year, require students to take 1 history course, 1 written English course, 1 physical science course, 1 math course, 1 language course, and one additional elective outside their major. These courses should be taught by the most engaging professors available, in order to inspire students to pursue these disciplines. Let the students choose their own "multi-cultural" and "interdisciplinary" directions.

Over the last decade I've been hiring the output of California's colleges and universities. (Perhaps a hundred or more California students total.)

As a first line manager, I need things to get done, run well, and show continuous improvement where possible. I most highly value people who are innovative and have the skills to get things done, combined with an attitude of helpfulness, optimism and drive. The most successful among them are able to communicate well, including mastery of written communications, the tools used for such, and a proper understanding of computer security.

These most successful employees have taken an interest in, and ownership of, the success of our business by sharing their skills and knowledge with others. They get to know the business, the customers and key talent in other departments. They apply "Melting Pot" principles to the office and the company to get things done. They encourage, teach, mentor and take advantage of distributed talent to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. (Now I work for some of them... ;-)

I cannot point to any aspect of these employee's success that arose from any multicultural studies training, however, I do see an opportunity. If you can use Multicultural Studies to show the value and wildly productive power of "Melting Pot" principles, you would be doing your students, and our economy, a huge favor.

**Start rant**

Liberal arts prepares students for a life in academe. It is totally out of synch with what employers want. Should a college "liberal arts" program even care about what employers think?.

Students are customers. You need to consider how you are going to sell this requirement to your customers (and to whomever will foot the bill for the new teaching positions). Are any of your students paying their own way?

Students attend college for different reasons:
1. To prepare for a career in academe as a professor.
2. Or to acquire knowledge/skills necessary for non-academic careers (in science, engineering, etc.).
3. Or because you need a degree (in anything) to get a white-collar job.
4. Or because it's what you do after high school, and if your parents are paying for you to party, why not?

Case #4 won't care what courses you force them to take.
Case #1 will welcome the multi-cult stuff, since it gives them an easy field of concentration as they work their way up the academic job ladder. Plus, they'll form political alliances with the multi-cult profs.
Case #3 may prefer taking easy multi-cult courses rather than rigorous science/math. However, working students may rebel against having to pay for yet another required course on their way to the diploma.
Case #2: The sci/math students will HATE any non sci/math reuirements, especially multi-cult cr*p. The only courses that would appeal to them (and that should fulfill any multi-cult requirement) are foreign languages. The non-sci/math students (education, J-school, pre-law, ...) would probably react like cases #3 and #4.

What is the real reason you want to impose this new requirement on students?

What employers want:
1. Cases #2 and #3. Don't even bother with cases #1 and #4.
2. SKILLS, not theory. What SKILLS will the student acquire by sitting through a required multi-cult course?

I agree with previous posts regarding the importance of knowing international etiquette, and having excellent business writing skills (don't get me started!). Foreign languages, too.

I'm a technical writer, undergrad Biology and grad CS degrees. I cringe every time I see a tech writer's resume that lists a degree in English or Journalism. Not rigorous areas of study. Very likely spent lots of time in multi-cult. And anyone who majored/minored in women's/gender/race studies? Ya gotta be kidding!

Thanks for listening!

**End rant**

You assume that I don't know what has fed into Western Civ? Bad assumption

I can tell from your posts that you don't. As a professor on the college level, I'm here to tell you that the first eight weeks of one of my survey classes is intimately bound up with the development of Western culture - its many sources with their myriad philosophies, belief systems, social orders, traditions and histories. It's clear to me that you have no idea what you are talking about. Not to mention the fact that your biases betray you. But talk on, my dear. Enjoy.

An aside: I once heard a woman telling a class of defenseless first graders that the man who painted those cave walls was named "Mr. Lass-Koe"! He he!

BTW, the reason you are sending your son off to ND is to be educated by people....just like me. People who have spent ten years + getting that higher education. People whose professional opinions are worth something.

BTW - Unlike you, when I sent my sons of to their tier one colleges, I laid no conditions on what they could or would not study. Adults make their own decisions, and wise parents know this.

Well, the humanities have increasingly become studies in "right thinking". There is a certain point of view that must be followed. Usually, it's a PC point of view and nothing else is accepted.

Of course, we all know this, but I think at some point the sciences and engineering are going to stand up and demand that the humanities not be put on nearly the same level. Scholarship standards are simply horrendous (Ward Churchill is an extreme example of what's typical.)

As a mathematician, it has always offended me that I must abide by the standards of "proof" while even physicists don't have so high a standard. But at least there's the (high) probability of failure.

There's an old joke: The dean is complaining to the head of the physics department about all of the very expensive equipment that they use. "Why can't you be more like the math department, all they need are pencils, paper and a wastebasket. Or sociology, they don't even need a wastebasket."

As an observer of this discussion, I'd like to remind our obviously-elitist professor, "ItCanHappenToYou," that although he's no doubt highly qualified, knowledge doesn't always equal wisdom.

Also, bboop never said she was going to impose class regulations on her son; only that she thought it was a disgusting waste of money.

I couldn't agree with her more. Ancient progenitor cultures such as the Egyptian and Mesopotamian ones are no longer useful to us. Western Civilization has evolved out of them; therefore, it has their best aspects, and has left the rest in the dust. The only value they hold is as teaching tools - it's certainly important to understand what made them successful. However, trying to learn a moral or cultural lesson from them is redundant, since our culture already contains those lessons.

To RepublicanProfessor: As to modern multiculturalism in the United States, I personally think that it's a very divisive force, when our name claims that we're "United." The proponents of the ideology that all cultures are equal, as well-intentioned as they are, are merely agents of division. As bboop observed, the measure of a culture is the fruit it produces - and Western Civilization has produced the most powerful nations and ideologies on the planet.

I do, however, think that other modern cultures have a place in a university setting. Students should have access to classes where they can learn what drives other cultures, and what makes them successful, as well as what makes them less successful. The professors for these classes obviously need to be very objective, however - and by objective, I don't mean that they should believe everything is equal! Quite the contrary - they should be willing to admit flaws in Western Civilization, but also flaws in other civilizations. Unfortunately, professors of this quality seem to be rather scarce...

I hope my thoughts will be useful to you. Good luck with your struggle against the PC tsunami!

About the only good a "multicultural" course can do you in the real working world is tell you who's got a political chip on his or (especially, alas) her shoulder and the ear of HR at the moment. Beyond that, not much.

Now, "interdisciplinary" can be a cat of another feather, depending on which disciplines are involved. I found a drawing course of inestimable value to a science degree due to a particularly gifted professor who insisted that we drew what we saw, even if it was a wart on a model. But courses that deliberately set out to be "interdisciplinary" often turn out to contain inadequate grasps of either topic, as I was reminded when reading a course syllabus for a "Feminist Science" class that was thankfully never approved.

Beyond that, when I was in the hiring game the most important thing I looked for beyond technical competence in the field was the ability to communicate it. The ability to construct a simple declarative sentence is the most vital interdisciplinary skill of all, and it really counts in the real world. Just my $0.02.

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