Posted on 10/24/2018 5:13:51 AM PDT by reaganaut1
We’re used to hearing that American college students don’t like reading and avoid tough courses where they have to. But a new course at the University of Oklahoma (OU) proves that many students are eager for a demanding course.
Here’s the story.
In the fall of 1941, as a visiting faculty member at the University of Michigan, the poet W.H. Auden offered an undergraduate course of staggering intellectual scope, entitled “Fate and the Individual in European Literature.” We know little about the origins or trajectory of this remarkable course: how it was conceived, how it was taught, how it was received.
It is mentioned in passing in some biographical accounts of Auden’s life. There are a few testimonials from students enrolled in the course (among whom was one Kenneth Millar, better known by his detective-fiction pseudonym Ross McDonald), but it has otherwise passed down into the memory hole—until recently.
Seventy-one years after the course was taught, a faded, marked-up copy of Auden’s original one-page syllabus was unearthed in Michigan’s archives by the literary scholar Alan Jacobs. He then posted on the internet for all to see. Soon it was circulating widely, eliciting a surprising amount of commentary.
Scholars were excited by the discovery, for it provided them with a list of texts that Auden himself, one of the greatest poets and critics of the twentieth century, considered central to the Western intellectual tradition. In a way, it was like a guided tour of the intellectual furniture of a great poet’s mind.
The course was enormous. It was as if Auden had put together an idiosyncratic and mainly literary version of a Great Books curriculum and compressed it into a single semester.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Think about how nasty that is, they were trying to washout SENIORS, many of whom had jobs lined up and graduation plans set. A lot of juniors took the class as practice, knowing they repeat it again. I was one of them. Somehow I passed it the first time.
My college let employees take classes for free so I got a night shift janitor job and was a full time engineering student. My #2 daughter was born between Sophomore & junior year. Thank god the ladies in the snack bar gave fellow school employees free coffee, I went through lots.
Just last night, I was talking with my son, who's being academically challenged for the first time in his life this year (AP math), about how to approach the class. Do the work, put in a tough, honest effort, get extra help when you need it, etc.
"I'd rather see you get an honest, hard-working D than a lazy A any day of the week," I said. "One of my proudest academic achievements was getting a D in DiffyQs after having an F average all semester."
And that was the truth. That, and eeking out a D in 2nd semester EE after averaging a solid T all semester.
STATISTICS? WOW! That seriously sucks. I was lucky enough to clep out of that thanks to AP Calc in HS, but I heard horror stories.
what university were you at?
I want to remain anonymous. I don’t give out personal info. Just say an east coast university.
I went through EE undergrad at the University of Wisconsin 65-70. At least the math courses had coeds in them!
When I was recruited by the Law School, while I was getting my MBA, I told the dean that I only had a 2.69 average in EE undergrad. He laughed and said that was the equivilent of a 4.0 in liberal arts! He said he was up to his eyeballs in dewy-eyed idealists who wanted to save the world...but what he needed to turn out was some quality patent attorneys. I had been recommended by my Business Law instructor, who had been a State Senate Page to my late Great Grandfather in the 50s.
I turned down the offer, but I did learn a great deal about my Great Grandfather that semester. Business Law was my favority course in Business School. Statistics is a contributing factor to my PTSD!
“You want to take a remarkably hard college course, take Differential Equations, or any advanced calculus class for that matter.”
For me it was a course with the simple title “Programming Languages”. I had to build a pre-compiler from scratch. Rumor has it that course had the 2nd highest drop out/fail rate, but I can tell you for sure it was required to get a BS in computer science.
Try "Existentialism and Modern Society" at 8:00 Saturday mornings during the winter semester in Northwestern Pennsylvania... hungover...
What are the odds of that happening?
I wrote to ask them to put the course online or at least the, "Readers Digest" version. Sounds like fun.
I have to say, I got very, very lucky.
I went to the USCGA in the late 80’s. We had a gent there by the name of Dr. Wolcin.
He looked like a Canadian. Sweater vest, always smiling, eyebrows always arched when he saw you, like he hadn’t seen you in a coon’s age, and he was glad to see you.
He finished his undergrad in math at Brown in one year. His masters in 6 months, and his PhD in one year. He taught at the Academy for the benefits, and for a day job, basically, but he did VERY lucrative work for the DOD on the side. Government installed safes in his house at their expense.
DOD would give him a problem to solve. He’d tell them, “Four weeks.” He’d go home, take it with him out by his pool, solve it that afternoon, then lock it in his safe until four weeks were up. Made as much as $25,000 a job.
When you are that good at math, your teaching style changes. We’d start a unit. He’d put a problem on the board, he’d demonstrate how to solve it. Just show you how to do it, like he’d be showing you how to bowl, or cook something.
Once he was satisfied everyone knew how to do it, and the quizzes came back good, then he’d take a day to show you WHY. How did this math fit into the real world, where was it used, etc. He FORBADE notes on that day. He told us to leave our books in the barracks. He just wanted to show us why and how the math was applied.
Then we’d be tested, and he gave us golden review sheets. They didn’t have the answers, but they were instructions on how to do each problem, like they were going to be made into stickers and placed over emergency exits (If you see smoke, Pull handle A . . .)
Each problem was a variant of the original problems we did in class. Then there were questions about application that were sentences.
DiffyQ was my favorite class in my EE program.
Linear Algebra was taught by LT. Gross. He died recently, and he was young when he taught us. Cancer.
He wasn’t as good as Wolcin, but he loved math like people love music. He told us flat out he had taken LA seven times. He had taken the same class, over and over again - seven times. We couldn’t believe it.
He told us that in every class, with every teacher, you are going to miss something. Each teacher is going to be stronger at teaching one unit than the next. He also told us the arrogant teachers are the ones who understand it the least. They don’t want to be smoked out. They are like bald guys wearing bad toupees.
Mr. Gross made us all fall in love with the Eigenvalue. He would have been my all-time favorite if Doc Wolcin wasn’t there. Multivariable was actually pretty easy, but our teacher made it pretty difficult. I had a C+ in that class and it was the second highest grade in the class.
And then there was Richard Hartnett, who taught us Communications theory in our EE program. Basically analog signals and how they are converted to digital. He invented a graphical method for designing Chebyshev and Butterworth analog bandpass filters.
Write your parameters down, then draw lines and at the end of the lines are your values. Friggin brilliant.
Time gives you some perspective. I was super, super fortunate.
I had an Organic Chemistry class where the professor faced the board and mumbled in a thick accent. He would write with his right hand and erase with his left as he worked across the room.
In today’s world you could take pictures with a smart phone but back then you had to write like hell!
Worth the reaad.
“What are the odds of that happening?”
I actually chose the class. I figured it would be the toughest class in my curriculum and I thought if I could pass this I could pass every class. Class was only 8 weeks and I spent many nights thinking that maybe a BS wasn’t for me, but I worked my butt off.
I wound up getting a B- for the course.
You want to take a remarkably hard college course, take Differential Equations, or any advanced calculus class for that matter.
_____________________________________________________
Pulled a solid “C” and haven’t looked back....
Been there, done that.
It wasn’t THAT hard - was that a boast?
But it sure cleaned out the undergrad engineering program.
A lot of careers in accounting began that semester.
A class mate, Bill, was one of the smartest guys I knew in my college years.
I remember Mr. Baughn saying, “Mr. P, I see you have an “A” going in this class. I have no doubt you will ace the final so I’ll enter an “A” in my grade book if you will help me look after the class.”
A few years later, Bill got slapped around by a neighborhood bully at a local bar.
Bill slipped off the bar stool and went home to get a hunting knife he’d been given the previous Christmas.
Bill returned to the bar and waited outside.
When the bully stepped out, he was stabbed twice. He bled to death a few feet from the bar’s front door.
Bill took a manslaughter plea and served most of an eight year prison sentence.
Last I heard, Bill had joined a motorcycle club...
Now that the thread has been well and truly highjacked by us geeks, I thought it might be nice to comment on the actual article.It’s certain that many of us (I have an ME degree) didn’t do well in humanities class; I for one thought the humanities textbook we used the best sleep aid I ever encountered.
But the world needs people who are good at that stuff, and FReepers tend to get a little better at it over time (or at least, I like to think so of myself).
It beats the snot out of having only deconstructionists and other cynics for intellectuals.
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