[289] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Humanities study (was Re: Affirmative action)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wally)
Sat Apr 28 15:10:44 2001
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 15:13:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: Wally <wally@sub-zero.mit.edu>
To: Doug Heimburger <dheimbur@MIT.EDU>
cc: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <200104281741.NAA21793@contents-vnder-pressvre.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0104281501290.16015-100000@sub-zero.mit.edu>
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> Hey now. I wouldn't characterize Course 15 as "easier" than Course 8,
> I would characterize it as "different."
I'll note that tibbetts' characterization of his courseload as '5 real
classes' falls prey to this same fallacy. Any class at this school (past
the freshman survey classes) will be time-consuming and challenging if you
care enough about it to *fully* engage the material. I'm taking seven
classes this term, one of which is a graduate seminar, two of which are
advanced literature seminars (the 21L.7xx classes) -- they're all HASS
classes, however, so people don't take this schedule seriously. Doug's
point about speaking in public is probably the most damning critique of
the engineering classes at this school: you're not *allowed* to fall
behind in the HASS seminars at this class, because you can't understand
the material by just listening to the professor. It's too easy to simply
disappear and do mediocre work in beginning- to mid-level engineering and
science classes at MIT.
The skills required of *genuinely capable* humanities students, the ones
that actually sink their teeth into the things they learn in class, are
completely foreign to the bulk of the MIT population. In short -- everyone
at MIT is capable of being an engineer. Most MIT students couldn't be
humanists.
Arga warga,
W.
