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February 28, 2005
Getting an Education About Coffee?
I saw an interesting AP article on CNN today, “Coffee a Popular Topic on College Campuses.”
For years, sociology professor Beau Weston has held informal office hours off campus in a local coffee shop, sipping his mocha latte while advising students.As he did, he formed relationships with other coffee shop regulars who might otherwise have remained strangers. That caused a sort of academic epiphany, and now he's one of a handful of teachers across the nation who have developed courses that study coffee and its effect on society.
The article also mentions other specialty classes, such as "Basketball As Religion."
My first reaction is skepticism. It seems that the trend these days, both in elementary and high schools, and colleges is to tend towards more and more off-the-wall topics merely in order to hold the attention of the students.
Mike over at Highered Intelligence deals with this issue a lot. In elementary and high schools, this seems to be geared towards using rap lyrics to teach poetry and comic books to interest kids in reading.
The object of education isn't just to "get someone to read anything." It can be a useful first step, but the truth of the matter is that one will not get all one should out of comic books if one doesn't know how to read in the first place.Once the knowledge of putting together sounds and reading is in place, it's time to start, you know, reading. And it's not about finding something that "grabs" a child. It's not about finding something that they like to read.
If we followed that recipe for child-rearing, dinner would be all ice cream and no vegetables.
At some point, if your child or student isn't reading books, and you know they can put together the sounds and read the words, it's time to sit their ass down in the chair and tell them they need to read Hamlet. And I mean Hamlet, not The Prince of Denmark: A Graphic Novel. Then you need to go through it with them, help them get through the (admittedly difficult) language and (even more difficult) philosophical ideas. You need to work the text, force the student's mind to engage.
The CNN article says that the class in question is being taught at “Centre, an elite private school known for producing two Supreme Court justices and hosting the 2000 vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman.” Presumably, then, these are students that aren’t just eating intellectual ice cream all day. It does, however, seem to me that this is the road down which this could lead, especially considering this quote from the article.
The feedback from parents has always been positive. "What they say is, 'Wow, my kid was really motivated.' They don't say, 'I want my money back,"' [John Ward, Centre's vice president for academic affairs] said.
Do parents actually send their children to school so that they can get really motivated about coffee? And, more worrisomely, is this all that kids are getting motivated about at college?
It seems that school is becoming more and more about learning knowledge, than actually getting an education.
An education is about more than just learning facts; it’s about gaining a love of knowledge, learning how to think critically, and internalizing the scientific method. If you’re truly an educated person, you enjoy learning about most any subject. You’re going to be motivated by almost any class you take in your chosen subject matter, not just the ones on topics that are “hip.”
From the article:
Ward said offering classes like the ones on basketball and coffee "is as if you hold a microscope up on something really interesting. We apply the same academic and intellectual rigor in courses like this as we do in advanced literature, language or science courses. It's the same tools at work."
I’m sure that the professors are actually making an attempt to hold the same academic standards to classes like this as they do to any class they teach. My question is, do the students really understand that?
Colleges offering classes like these need to be certain that the option to take them comes only after a thorough introduction to the main subject matter. Instead of using “fun” courses like we should in elementary school, to build children’s skills and interest so that they can participate in a more serious study of the subject later, they should be used in college as a way to apply basic principles that have been well learned beforehand.
Posted by illuminaria at February 28, 2005 07:24 PM
Comments
The article was a little misleading, though I am grateful that they took the course seriously. Our focus was not so much on coffee, as on the cafe as a place in which strangers can discuss serious issues and create a public life.
The link to the syllabus, if you would like to see it, is
http://web.centre.edu/ant/SYLLABI/WESTON/C05CafeCourse.html
Posted by: Beau Weston at April 10, 2005 11:20 PM