That'll come in handy at Starbucks.
Posted on 03/24/2014 8:21:02 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Even National Public Radio (NPR) occasionally realizes that some college courses are straight from la-la land.
A recent report from the Protojournalist mentions an unusual offering in the area of Mythology and Folklore at Harvard called Maledicta, which is described as “an academic exploration of ritualized verbal abuse,” according to a report in the Protojournalist.
Students taking this class apparently examine “international traditions of vituperation and cursing in their folkloristic, historical and sociological settings.” Not only that, “they learn about practices including Turkish verbal duels, Scottish flyting and African-American “dozens.”
Rutgers University also proves it is no slouch in the arena of the unusual, by offering a course in the Women’s and Gender Studies department called “Politicizing Beyonce.” Lecturer Ken Allred says he created the course because he believes that Beyonce is not only attempting to create a grand narrative around her persona,” but she is also an “agent of social change.”
And what about “The History of Surfing,” offered by the University of North Carolina, Wilmington? History Department chairman Paul Townend defends the academic worthiness of the course, saying that “there are very rich themes: the non-Western history of surfing as a practice, the transmittal of the practice to America and the West, the connections to American counterculture, the commodification of surfing over time.”
In conclusion, Townend says the course is “a gateway for getting students to see how historians think, study about culture, cultural interactions and exchanges, and change over time. They get a good exposure to a range of different sources — oral histories, films, and objects as well as more traditional written sources.”
$1000 was the cost of an expensive house.
See, I thought it said....”Proctojournalists”.
That'll come in handy at Starbucks.
Oprah meets Jaws
When I was in school...the physics department offered a handful of 1 credit courses than lasted one third of the semester.
(The disadvantage was sometimes the cost of the text that was only good for one month.)
Any way, save for the all-but-totally useless "Beyonce" pimping, the rest could be worth a credit for a month's study.
I can't really see any benefit for the typical student wasting time in a padded-out, narrow-interest, cultural topic for an entire semester.
Then “your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries “ has to be part of the class.
Yikes. My father refused to let me take a course in Sociology!
Stripping out the taxpayer funding would require people (i.e., potential students and their parents) to make real life decisions regarding return on investment. You want to study art history and think you can support yourself with that degree? Go for it! Just don’t try to make me pay for your folly. But then, I knew I wanted to be an engineer by the time I was 12. My university required “X” hours of “non-technical electives”, so I took history courses for those credit hours. They were interesting and helped jack up my GPA. But I knew I could never make a decent living with a BA in history.
When I was at Berkeley in the late 80s, they had a popular course on Chocolate. It was not an easy course, though, I was told. It was heavy on the chemistry and light on the snacking.
Actually, engineering majors have a rougher time with classes outside of engineering.
Things like ethnic or gender studies lead to a pretty limited career path. I even think something like Asian studies is great for someone who plans to become some sort of liaison working in an Asian nation but that’s pretty limited and the training slanted.
I have a cousin who worked in Japan for several years and says his extensive Asian studies training here in the USA was completely worthless there. All he learned here is that Americans have always been racists who mistreat Asians at every opportunity. Fortunately he found a college course in Japan created for westerners by the Japanese that really brought him up to speed.
I ended up taking “The elements of masturbation” and “The hard science of soft porn” my last quarter.
Okay, actually, one was an “art” class and the professor started it with a video he’d made. There were two dark columns with a stream of water between them. The camera slowly passes between the columns and focused on where the water was coming from. It was the professor’s penis. (Really.) He was later fired for having sex with male and female students in his office in return for a passing grade. The other class was, “The History of Film.” All you had to do was watch old movies and answer multiple choice questions like “Who stared in ‘the Maltese Falcon?’” Kids would panic because they were STONED when they watched the movies. He’d say, “Come to my office and bring one of your friends like Jim Beam or Jonnie Walker.” About 20 years later he too was fired for taking alcohol in exchange for grades. I hated that entire side of the campus.
Monty Python to get royalties
(* BA would be "Barista Arts")
But pornography and transgender classes are cool. /s
Basket weaving is far more valuable.
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