An Issue of Pedagogy

First of all, I want to begin this entry with an apology. It seems I'm always apologizing here for this, but etiquette still demands it: sorry for the absence. A dozen or more things cropped up and got in the way of writing here in, well, over two months. Embarrassing to say the least, but it's my intention to write here more often. At this current point in time, I'm working on my Honours thesis in University so I should be in the writing mentality quite often over the next year and I'll certainly be spending a lot of time sitting in the library and looking to a computer, like the one I'm using at this very moment, as my salvation from a stack of books describing the inhumanities of Africa's conflicts.

As I'm mentioning academia, I feel it would be relevant to move on to the main topic of this entry: pedagogy. Or, rather, the administration of pedagogy at Universities with a particular focus on the degree programs offered by the University of Calgary's Faculty of Social Sciences.

As you might be able to glean from my past entries and the above two paragraphs, I am an Honours Political Science student at what we'll hitherto refer to colloquially as "the U of C". I have been a student at said institution for just past two years now (I took my first year at Mount Royal College to ease into the post-secondary life) and cannot say that I am impressed. I have no problems with the aesthetics of the buildings, as some do. To be honest, I couldn't care what they look like. I also do not have any problems with the teaching styles of my professors. I've disagreed with the ideological orientations of some of my professors and have been upset by their biases but I see that to be a good thing to have at a University- once your degree is finished, you are going to have to go out into the real world and deal with people of all kinds of backgrounds, so you had better get used to learning how to work around or with such differences of opinions now.

What I do have a problem with, however, are the degree requirements. The system by which my Faculty in particular grants degrees to paying customers is a joke. For such a sweeping remark to be justified, I should explain the way the system works to those who have not studied at the U of C.

The Faculty of Social Sciences here, apparently, feels that its students must be "well-rounded" in their education. In other words, it is not enough for a Political Science student to study Political Science. A Major in one of the Social Sciences must also have a background in several other areas too. To this end, there are things in the system called "Area requirements". There are three categories to these requirements. Area I consists of courses offered by the Faculty of Humanities but also includes some Physical Activity courses and even a few classes from the Faculty of Fine Arts. Area II consists of courses offered by the Faculty of Social Sciences other than the student's Major. Area III consists of courses offered by the Faculty of Sciences.

So what does this all mean? Basically, what it means is that a Political Science student, like myself, cannot take courses relevant to our degree or to our future careers. Instead, I am expected to pick and choose from a very restricted menu as if I were a customer at a cheap sushi bar. It is not, however, a system which belongs at a well-reputed post-secondary institution to which I am paying thousands of dollars to get an education and a slip of paper which is supposed to get me access to higher-paying and much more meaningful forms of employment.

For example, let's say I'm someone who just wants this slip of paper at the end of the four years and doesn't care particularly about how I get there. I could get a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Political Science but only 25% of my courses might actually be Political Science courses or even be politically related. The rest of my degree could be made up of ball-room dancing (Area I), brain chemistry (Area II- Psychology) and meteorology (Area III). What good would this person serve in a political bureaucratic position? Let's check it out. Say I apply with this butchered degree to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I get the job. I am now a Political Officer with Canada's own diplomatic corps. But what do I know about diplomacy? Very little. But I know how to dance, can prescribe amphetamines for headaches and can predict with some degree of accuracy when it's going to rain. Scary.

In my case, I am very picky about which classes I choose to satisfy my degree requirements. I cannot justify to myself taking, for example, "Climatology" from the Department of Geography when I know that class would serve no purpose to my improvement as an individual or provide me with a better way to serve my future employer. But many can and do. Many just aren't willing to sift through the thousands of classes on the calendar during registration to find something that will not only fit the Faculty's imposed degree requirements and their own personal self-imposed requirements for graduation.

The point of this ramble is, what right does the Faculty of Social Sciences have to impose such illogical requirements? Why is it that a Physical Geography class meets a requirement for a Political Science degree when a Human Geography course is specifically left out? Do they seriously think that soil variation and topography will be useful skills for students of political philosophy to acquire?

To be honest, I find the system absurd and in immediate need of revisal. But with such a stuffy and collegial atmosphere to the Faculty, would they be open to change? Would they understand that students in this current day and age are career-minded and not interested in wiling away their days on a campus taking obscure courses on subjects which are entirely unrelated to their interests or their favoured raison d'etre? Or would they just splutter and scoff, "Well, this is the way things have always been here?"

Perhaps the best thing which I can take away from this University are the words a friend of mine said yesterday as she applied to convocate in June. "I've given up on trying to understand this place. The things they do here don't make any sense and, to be honest, I don't think they ever did make sense."