There is no single fact all Princeton students share. The closest we come to having a shared experience is the freshman writing seminar, in which the shared experience is generally one of commiseration.
Place any two students in a room: What is the likelihood that their accumulated course material will overlap? There is no guarantee that they will have read any of the same texts or encountered the same problems. The academic topic they will most likely discuss is how much they despised the freshman writing seminar.
This is probably not the intention of administrators. The general education requirements exist for a reason: to "provide all students with a common language and common skills," according to the Undergraduate Announcement.
It is strange to many that, for example, ART 105: Lab in Conservation of Art can be lumped together with EEB 346: Biology of Coral Reefs under the banner of science and technology (ST). Or that students fulfilling a quantitative reasoning (QR) requirement can almost avoid math altogether, choosing from CHE 199: Great Inventions That Changed the World, AST 204: Topics in Modern Astronomy or LIN 225: Experimental Syntax.
Add to this discussion the recent hubbub about Harvard's proposed religion requirement, a category they call "Faith and Reason." Realizing that our administration has a record of adopting any chance proposal to come out of Cambridge — as well as a few professors — The Daily Princetonian's Editorial Board has preemptively opposed any similar plan at Princeton.
Though it's unclear to me how an academic field of study can be isolated like minorities in a slum — well, the E-quad might count — the sentiment is correct in its most basic point: Religion is not suited to its own distribution requirement.
Unfortunately, the reasoning isn't very convincing. Whichever verb you choose — separate, compartmentalize or segregate (also probably not the best choice) — it is silly to claim that religion should not be "ghettoized" given that it already has been, namely in that "ghetto" that is the religion department of 1879 Hall.
As to the second argument, it cannot be doubted that adding a requirement would result in "creating more requirements." In order to comprehend the intended meaning behind this strange piece of logic one must first assume a) that someone has already suggested adding a religion requirement to Princeton's curriculum, though no one has, b) that it would be in addition to the already existing eight general education requirements and c) that this would be a bad thing.
Even if we grant each one of these steps, one can easily respond that this administration, which has pioneered a radical grade deflation policy, has little regret about making students' lives harder.
So we need a better reason to dissuade them. How about this: Princeton does not need a religion requirement because it's simply not as fundamental as math, science, history or philosophy.
In a Nov. 14 opinion piece for The Crimson, Harvard professor Edward Glaeser suggested that universities should teach "methodologies" rather than "facts." This is for the simple reason that methods are harder to teach than facts — one can easily read the results of a scientific study, but it's harder to learn the correct approach to empirical research.
Glaeser is thinking principally of the sciences, but we can follow his line of reasoning: ST courses teach the scientific method, QR classes clarify the basic principles of math and logic, the ethics and morals requirement uses the argumentation in analytic philosophy, and historical analysis teaches the craft of historiography.
Our system is not perfect and some QR courses might not highlight the methodology as effectively as others, but religion itself has no distinct methodology. Outside of the historical and philosophical approaches, religious principles — unlike mathematical or philosophical ones — can have no academic truth value. It is not the job of scholars to determine which divine messages are more truthful.
The distribution requirements, though imperfect, are important because they teach students how to approach material. Our two strangers might not both know the facts of Van der Waal's forces or J.J. Thompson's view on abortion, but they share the more fundamental knowledge of how to approach scientific and ethical questions. In addition to despising the writing seminar, that is. J.R. de Lara is a politics major from Ithaca, N.Y. He can be reached at jdelara@princeton.edu.
Read More
Keep academic authority in human hands
Lily Halbert-AlexanderThe Trump administration’s attacks on research and higher education as well as a blind reliance on AI chatbots are reflective of a societal backslide: a commodification of knowledge that prioritizes “efficiency” over the messy process of getting to an answer, where nuances are flattened and the truth is fungible.
The Trump administration’s attacks on research and higher education as well as a blind reliance on AI chatbots are reflective of a societal backslide: a commodification of knowledge that prioritizes “efficiency” over the messy process of getting to an answer, where nuances are flattened and the truth is fungible.
What do we owe society for a Princeton education?
Jia Cheng ShenThe social and moral responsibility that comes with receiving a degree subsidized by both private generosity and public trust is significant.
The social and moral responsibility that comes with receiving a degree subsidized by both private generosity and public trust is significant.
Notes from a so-called enemy’s classroom
Jennifer JenningsIt wasn’t revolutionary. It was homework. But it was homework that asked: how do we build schools that work for all kids? Inclusion, after all, is the “I” in DEI. That’s what we’re thinking about together. And caring about each other’s experiences and opportunities, it turns out, isn’t something you can outlaw.
It wasn’t revolutionary. It was homework. But it was homework that asked: how do we build schools that work for all kids? Inclusion, after all, is the “I” in DEI. That’s what we’re thinking about together. And caring about each other’s experiences and opportunities, it turns out, isn’t something you can outlaw.