In The Herald’s most recent undergraduate poll, about 61 percent of students expressed the opinion that the University should offer minors. Though important arguments for the introduction of new programs exist, we strongly believe minors should not be implemented. Introducing minors at Brown would not only undermine the purpose of the Open Curriculum, but it would also add to the problematic culture of pursuing credentials for the sake of resume padding, instead of engaging with the academic choices available at the University.
Introducing minors would further entrench a structure of pre-professionalism within Brown’s curriculum. Some may argue this is not a bad thing, but there is little denying that the perspective as a whole is diametrically opposed to the Open Curriculum. Students come to Brown for a variety of reasons and make use of the Curriculum in myriad ways, but the idea of a general liberal arts education, and Brown’s curriculum in particular, is for a student to study an array of disciplines to gain multiple critical points of access to problems and ideas, and then, over the course of working toward an undergraduate degree, come to focus on a specific area.
The reason behind the large number of courses required for a concentration is to train a student in his or her chosen discipline. This requires not only the articulation, practice and mastery of the skills that accompany that discipline — such as analytical writing for the humanities or logical proof deduction for mathematics — but also a significant area of expertise within the field that the student explores in depth. This scope of experience cannot realistically be contained in the reduced course load a minor demands. Either the initial grounding in the field would suffer, with worrying consequences for both post-college employment and later work conducted within that discipline, or the chosen focus would be dramatically reduced, in which case the student would not be given the chance to apply his or her skills and acquired knowledge in a meaningful way.
But perhaps most important is the fact that official minors are unnecessary because the agency the Brown curriculum allows its students give minors an unofficial — but transparent — existence at Brown. Students regularly take several courses in one department they are not concentrating in because they enjoy or feel they get a lot out of them. Taking enough of these courses is essentially creating your own minor — but one that you’ve constructed, instead of fulfilling yet another set of requirements, complete with unappealing classes and those taken just to fit within a certain program.
Because the Open Curriculum allows Brown students so much control over the direction of our educations, the need to slap a label on portions of our courses of study seems to rise out of desire to pursue credentials rather than learning for learning’s sake. This may seem necessary in the job market, but we doubt the mere ability to call a small set of courses by a particular program name will convince a prospective employer one way or the other — the fact that students have taken these courses is something they can emphasize without a label.
But we acknowledge some alternatives to minors could improve the relationships between students and their educations. A potential change to the curriculum could be a certification for certain select skills, like attaining fluency in a foreign language, mastering a specific programming code or reaching a professional skill-level with an instrument. Like being trained in depth in an academic discipline, these examples reflect significant achievements of determination, focus, practice and passion — something we remain unconvinced would be conveyed by introducing a limitation on the Open Curriculum in the form of minors.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editor, Dan Jeon, and its members, Mintaka Angell, Samuel Choi, Nicholas Morley and Rachel Occhiogrosso. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
