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Editorial: Increasing flexibility in laboratory requirements
Published: Friday, February 26th, 2010
According to the University’s “Undergraduate Announcement,” the system of distribution requirements exists “to achieve a truly liberal education” at Princeton. Students perennially find it difficult, however, to take classes that match their interests within every distribution requirement, and professors ...(back to the article)
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"In contrast to many ST courses, STX courses, such as CHM 333: Oil to Ozone: Chemistry of the Environment don't actually have anything to do with science and are complete fluff".
Where's the EditsBoard's piece on using fewer books in humanities classes?
Bunch of self-obsessed science-fearing WWS tools...
Of course most ST courses should have a lab - those STX courses without a lab are those that resemble real theoretical physics (e.g. PHY 305) not gut courses with no real science, experimental or theoretical
YES this would have been incredible.
Recommending STX actually gets humanities kids in more trouble since most of them are pretty difficult. As a social science major, I took the STX Intro to Cognitive Neuroscience, which required a lot of memorization. Very relieved I PDF'ed and passed, but got about a 50% on both the midterm and final.
Isn't the point of the lab to give students a hands-on approach to the scientific method? I'm in an STX now, and I'm certainly not learning anything about the process of doing science... which was emphasized in both my STs.
yeah, people in general are woefully uninformed about science. i don't think we should be decreasing the requirements. st labs could emphasize the experimental process more though.
Isn't the point of distribution requirements to force students to be exposed to topics outside their comfort zone and normal area of interest? Allowing them to fill their ST in ways that "match their interests" and don't require laboratory thinking skills defeats the purpose of distribution requirements. If you don't like the Princeton curriculum, then you should have chosen a school that had different requirements.
a terrible idea from a terrible editorial board. Look at the distribution requirements - there is already a woeful lack of real science and math being taken by the majority of students, while Princetonians majoring in science often have to take as many as 9 non-science courses. You non-science majors already barely understand real science; why make it worse?
I haven't been paying attention, but have science and engineering students asked that humanities distribution courses be given that don't require WRITING?
This article is pathetic, and the proposals within it feeble at best. If you really care that much about getting your ST's over with, take Bridges in the fall and spring, or take only one of them in conjunction with Stars for Stoners, etc. It's really not that hard, people.