Slate’s been doing a series about college classes everyone should take, and one of the most heavily promoted of these has been a piece by Dan Check urging students to take something they’re terrible at. This is built around an amusing anecdote about an acting class he took back in the day, but as much as this appeals to my liberal-arts-school background, I think it has some serious problems, which are pretty clearly displayed early on:
At four-year colleges, there is enough time and space to do something much more interesting: take at least one course in a subject in which you are untalented, and about which you are not passionate. There is a lot to be learned by taking seriously that which you have no business taking seriously, and college is one of the last times you will be able to pursue something that you’re truly awful at without serious consequence. So, rather than recommending a specific course, I recommend a type of course: the type that exposes you to other people’s talents, rather than your own, and that which allows you to really bask in the feeling of utter, hopeless ineptitude.
While this is very much in the “cleverly counterintuitive” mode that Slate has raised to an art (and better than the default “everybody should take a class in this thing that I personally work on”), it’s also making a lot of presumptions. First and foremost, it’s addressed only to four-year college students, who as Matt “Dean Dad” Reed is quick to remind people, are only a subset of the total college population.
I think this is probably restricted even more than that, though, because that “without serious consequence” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Yes, if you’re a good student from a well-off family, your college GPA probably isn’t terribly consequential in terms of your future employment prospects. You can afford to take a C- in a drama course if you’re pulling A’s in your political science major, and it will provide an amusing anecdote to share when you interview for law school/ an internship at a major New York media company.
But as much as academics, particularly in a liberal arts context, like to decry grade-grubbing and careerism among students in general, I suspect that good grades and “marketable” skills really do matter for students from less privileged backgrounds. All those paper-resume studies showing the effects of implicit biases sort of highlight this– if changing the name on an identical resume significantly reduces the chance of an imaginary student getting an offer, well, if you’re a real student on the bad side of that effect, you probably want to do everything you can to make sure your resume isn’t identical, but better. The C- in drama that becomes a funny anecdote to liven up Dan’s interview might become a “lack of focus” that keeps Denise from getting called back.
And, of course, there’s the economic issue. If you’re paying a comprehensive fee at an elite college, then, yeah, you’ve got a few “extra” classes you might as well fill with something amusing. If you’re paying course by course at a regional university, a class in something you’re terrible at might represent a significant additional cost.
(It probably goes without saying that this is also terrible advice for students who are already mediocre. If you’re running a C+/B- in your major, your time would be much better spent getting good at something first before you go looking for personal growth through hopeless ineptitude.)
So, like a lot of advice-to-students that prioritizes personal growth, this makes me a little twitchy. It’s pitched as general advice, but it’s really advice for a rather limited demographic– good students from well-off backgrounds. Which, admittedly, is the primary demographic for elite media outlets like Slate (or at least the demographic that their readers want to see themselves as), but it’d be nice to have a little more acknowledgement of that.
(Of course, as a college classmate noted in comments on Facebook, this advice is arguably less awful than “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” Which it’s trivial to demonstrate is a false statement…)
Again, I’m all in favor of broadening horizons and trying new things, and occasionally regret not taking a slightly wider range of stuff back when I was a student. And God knows, there are a lot of students out there who could benefit enormously from loosening up a bit and taking a class they know they’ll bomb. But the idea that this is “without serious consequence” for everyone is presuming an awful lot, in a way that I don’t think is particularly helpful for anyone.
——
(This is a revise-and-extend of stuff I said on Twitter yesterday.)
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1PLbLlT
Slate’s been doing a series about college classes everyone should take, and one of the most heavily promoted of these has been a piece by Dan Check urging students to take something they’re terrible at. This is built around an amusing anecdote about an acting class he took back in the day, but as much as this appeals to my liberal-arts-school background, I think it has some serious problems, which are pretty clearly displayed early on:
At four-year colleges, there is enough time and space to do something much more interesting: take at least one course in a subject in which you are untalented, and about which you are not passionate. There is a lot to be learned by taking seriously that which you have no business taking seriously, and college is one of the last times you will be able to pursue something that you’re truly awful at without serious consequence. So, rather than recommending a specific course, I recommend a type of course: the type that exposes you to other people’s talents, rather than your own, and that which allows you to really bask in the feeling of utter, hopeless ineptitude.
While this is very much in the “cleverly counterintuitive” mode that Slate has raised to an art (and better than the default “everybody should take a class in this thing that I personally work on”), it’s also making a lot of presumptions. First and foremost, it’s addressed only to four-year college students, who as Matt “Dean Dad” Reed is quick to remind people, are only a subset of the total college population.
I think this is probably restricted even more than that, though, because that “without serious consequence” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Yes, if you’re a good student from a well-off family, your college GPA probably isn’t terribly consequential in terms of your future employment prospects. You can afford to take a C- in a drama course if you’re pulling A’s in your political science major, and it will provide an amusing anecdote to share when you interview for law school/ an internship at a major New York media company.
But as much as academics, particularly in a liberal arts context, like to decry grade-grubbing and careerism among students in general, I suspect that good grades and “marketable” skills really do matter for students from less privileged backgrounds. All those paper-resume studies showing the effects of implicit biases sort of highlight this– if changing the name on an identical resume significantly reduces the chance of an imaginary student getting an offer, well, if you’re a real student on the bad side of that effect, you probably want to do everything you can to make sure your resume isn’t identical, but better. The C- in drama that becomes a funny anecdote to liven up Dan’s interview might become a “lack of focus” that keeps Denise from getting called back.
And, of course, there’s the economic issue. If you’re paying a comprehensive fee at an elite college, then, yeah, you’ve got a few “extra” classes you might as well fill with something amusing. If you’re paying course by course at a regional university, a class in something you’re terrible at might represent a significant additional cost.
(It probably goes without saying that this is also terrible advice for students who are already mediocre. If you’re running a C+/B- in your major, your time would be much better spent getting good at something first before you go looking for personal growth through hopeless ineptitude.)
So, like a lot of advice-to-students that prioritizes personal growth, this makes me a little twitchy. It’s pitched as general advice, but it’s really advice for a rather limited demographic– good students from well-off backgrounds. Which, admittedly, is the primary demographic for elite media outlets like Slate (or at least the demographic that their readers want to see themselves as), but it’d be nice to have a little more acknowledgement of that.
(Of course, as a college classmate noted in comments on Facebook, this advice is arguably less awful than “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” Which it’s trivial to demonstrate is a false statement…)
Again, I’m all in favor of broadening horizons and trying new things, and occasionally regret not taking a slightly wider range of stuff back when I was a student. And God knows, there are a lot of students out there who could benefit enormously from loosening up a bit and taking a class they know they’ll bomb. But the idea that this is “without serious consequence” for everyone is presuming an awful lot, in a way that I don’t think is particularly helpful for anyone.
——
(This is a revise-and-extend of stuff I said on Twitter yesterday.)
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1PLbLlT
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