Course requirements compromise quality education

By Brett Bender

Yale's distributional requirements for the undergraduate degree are both descriptive and prescriptive, creating a model to which students should or must conform. The "Guidelines for the Distribution of Studies" provide the rationale for these requirements, but the logic connecting the two is flawed. The "Guidelines" are capricious in their distinction between "should" and "must," permitting students to attain a diploma while evading the classes that offer the skills and knowledge Yale has termed important. The required conditions are trivial to true education. While the situation could be resolved either by the abolishment of requirements or by their elaboration and refinement, the former is the only reasonable solution.

Open your Blue Book to page 15 and peruse an exemplar of incoherent argument. "It is axiomatic that educated men and women should be able to express themselves effectively in their own language, both in speech and in writing;" if this is a self-evident proposition, why is there not a composition course requirement? "To suppose that anyone who cannot write clearly can think clearly is an illusion," the Guidelines maintain; I shudder to think that Yale, in lacking such a requirement, might graduate students whose thoughts are muddled.

"So pervasive," assert the Guidelines, "are mathematical techniques that contemporary men and women may not consider themselves truly educated until they have an understanding of the fundamentals of mathematics." Yet there is no requirement for any proficiency in, or even exposure to, math. It inevitably follows that some Yale graduates, lacking knowledge of math, may not be truly educated.

The Guidelines speak to other interests beyond English and mathematics. "Only by studying a science can one develop the critical faculties that educated citizens need." These faculties include, "an ability to evaluate the claims of experts, to distinguish quackery from responsible science, and to realize which things...are knowable and unknowable, to science." This statement leads to the rule that two of the three required Group IV credits must be in the natural sciences, but without regard to rigor or content. An intensive introduction to Biology, Chemistry, or Physics better develops the critical faculties than do "guts" such as Electrical Engineering 101, yet the easier courses also satisfy the requirement. This rule fails its purpose, and results in packed lectures reminiscent of hour-long programs on the Discovery Channel: tidy packages of gee-whiz trivia, lacking scholarship.

Use of a foreign language, declares the Guidelines, will "increase subtlety of mind" and will provide "superior advantages and opportunities." The former claim is brazen nonsense (from personal experience, I can assure you that use of a foreign language decreases subtlety). Further, in communication or thought, the obvious and articulate is always preferable to the subtle and confused. Yale must first teach its students to write and think intelligibly, and only then subtly. I am hard-pressed to disagree with the latter claim, as ignorance is generally not advantageous, but the degree to which proficiency in a foreign language will affect a person is a function of his or her individual situation, not a constant.

There are two solutions to the current inconsistencies. Yale could reexamine its convictions regarding the proper components of a liberal education, and streng-then its rules accordingly. Yet given the myriad things that a student "must" know in order to be "truly educated," such a solution would result in a preposterous proliferation of requirements.

The alternative solution, abolishment, is preferable for its simplicity and parsimony. Aside from a general admonition that one ought to be well-informed and capable of thinking clearly, the proper guidelines for a student's studies must derive from details unique to that individual's life. The claim that the University custimarily knows what is best for its students is not borne out by its inconsistent policy. When competent composition, knowledge of mathematics, and ability in scientific reasoning are claimed as necessities but left up to the student to achieve, why is foreign language proficiency strictly mandated? The answer is that the requirements flowed from the pen of an author (or perhaps a committee) bereft of clear reason and drunk on verbiage. They should be repealed.

Brett Bender is a junior in Pierson.

Back to Opinion...