IT HAS always struck me as odd that college students have to fulfill certain distribution requirements completely unrelated to any academic interests they may have. I honestly feel that this is rather paternalistic and, ultimately, counterproductive to encouraging genuine intellectual curiosity.
College is perhaps the only place where one can learn, explore and discover one's intellectual interests in a relatively flexible environment. Unlike high school, when students are scrambling to overload themselves with Advanced Placement classes to impress the all-powerful college admissions committees, or even graduate school, where flexibility must be largely abandoned for a deeper understanding of a very narrow field, college provides undergraduates a special opportunity to explore several subjects.
Or rather it should. By imposing requirements on students prescribing that they take a certain number of courses in designated subject areas such as math, science and English literature, colleges narrow and constrain student choices. Forcing students to endure classes they do not like smacks too much of the broccoli syndrome - "Eat it, it's good for you."
Perhaps there is something to be said for force-feeding students with courses they would not have taken otherwise - I just cannot think of what that might be. Although some might suggest that coercive distribution requirements force students to broaden their horizons and actively achieve the goal of a liberal arts education, this is a difficult argument to maintain. It is ultimately premised on the theory that distribution requirements are the sole reason why student populations are not wholly pre-professional. This seems difficult to believe. After all, many students will use college as an opportunity to take courses outside of their chosen field of study anyway. Distribution requirements, however, force them to enroll in certain classes, limiting the number of courses they can voluntarily choose. Rather than developing intellectual skills, this approach is more conducive to rule-bending, as students try to find techniques to circumvent taking such courses.
I know that I tried - unsuccessfully - to avoid taking courses that were designated to meet distribution requirements. I procrastinated as much as I could, vainly hoping that my institution's administrators would eventually see the light. In truth, such courses were usually large lecture classes, taught by bored professors to bored students, neither group being there by choice.
Also, why do people choose to take these big lecture classes? Because they do not wish to study the subject in the first place and want to take courses which will likely have a minimal impact upon their grades or will not distract them too much from other classes on which they would rather focus. I do not mean to disparage the intellectual aims of those large lecture classes - I simply did not find them to be interesting and resented the lost opportunity to take courses in which I truly was interested.
Particularly at a school like the University, which places such great emphasis on student self-governance, I am surprised to see that distribution requirements still exist and are, indeed, deeply entrenched. These requirements, far from supporting student empowerment, send a clear message that University undergraduates are incapable of deciding which courses are best for themselves.
What is even more puzzling is that the University already recognizes that some students - Echols and Jefferson Scholars - are intellectually mature enough to be free of such rigid distribution requirements. Why treat the rest of University students as intellectually immature?
Even if a student does not know what major to declare upon entering college, he likely knows his preferences. If a student would like to explore and take courses from German to Geometry, he should be free to do so. By the same token, if a student wants to concentrate solely within one area, he should be given that right as well, without the unnecessary encumbrances of having to take courses which ultimately may not relate to his course of study.
To be clear, I do not mean to stretch this point to include distribution requirements within majors. Once a student has selected an area of study, it does make sense to consider a linked set of course requirements. Such distribution requirements are designed to ensure that the student is exposed to the major's main areas of inquiry. Courses within a specific field of study are much more likely to be interconnected, which lends credence to studying that field from several different vantage points to better understand the whole.
Although, unfortunately, there are no signs of the University changing its policy anytime soon, I might suggest a revision of its current approach to handling distribution requirements. The University should consider streamlining the general distribution requirements for undergraduates to four courses in four different subject areas - one course for each subject area. These courses should be graded on a pass/fail basis to assure students that there would be no impact on their GPAs. Furthermore, the student should be allowed the option of substituting a different subject area for one of the designated options. Such an opportunity will allow the student to take a course that reflects genuine intellectual curiosity.
Hopefully, the University will eventually acknowledge that students have the capacity to make responsible intellectual choices and will finally dispense with mandated distribution requirements. Until then, though, I guess we ought to start browsing those course catalogs.
Sanjiv Tata's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at s.tata@cavalierdaily.com.
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