This week in opinion: Frontiers of Sigh-ance

SCIENCE. It's that thing with formulas and stuff.

At Columbia, discussions about Frontiers of Science are so common that even by sophomore year I, like most of my classmates, have become uninterested in talking, reading, or doing anything that might call to mind the horrible memory that was that graduation requirement seemingly designed to enrage and stupify everyone.

Not suprisingly, in the recent editorial about the subject, the author offers not, as she claims in the title, a “new perspective on Frontiers of Science” but rather a fairly bland summary of the few arguments in favor of not entirely eliminating the course. And, yes, while the counterarguments have been offered up time and time again, this article seems to be the perfect opportunity for a rehashing of the arguments against Frontiers.

Wang begins with the notion that being at the forefront of one’s field is the same thing as being able to teach one’s field. This is both a common and wildly false (as clearly demonstrated by nearly everyone’s experience with the course) assertion. There are reasons that teaching certificates and teaching schools exist separately from doctorates and PhD programs. Amongst them is this: teaching, for example, physics and applying physics are two entirely different things requiring two entirely different skill-sets and talents. Having the ability to apply or innovate with physics — however brilliantly — does not mean that that same person will make a good physics teacher.

Wondering why Columbia students describe Frontiers as “stupid”, she then continues to explain that if Frontiers homework takes less time than our Lit Hum homework, we really ought not to be complaining. Speaking as someone who was never assigned a Frontiers homework assignment and as such was unprepared for and bewildered by the midterm and the final, I feel particularly qualified to speak on this subject. Did I have far less work for Frontiers than I did for Lit Hum? Yes. Yet Wang seemingly fails to remember that that this is Columbia. Neither I, nor, I am sure, my classmates, came to Columbia to take easy classes from which we would gain little.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what Frontiers of Science is, and more. I can safely say that Frontiers is by far the class that I have gained the least from. It is not — as Wang asserts — by lack of personal effort or by virtue of an “attitude problem” but rather the result of the inherent inanity of a course whose main function seems to be to talk about how awesome science is while simultaneously dragging down the GPA of non-science majors.

Then, in a bewildering and painful twist of logic, Wang praises the fact that Frontiers does not use a text book. There’s a phrase to explain this in high school: “No Child Left Behind took our funding”; in a world-famous university, this is entirely unacceptable. Wang’s own words, “Rarely would one expect to find such a class anywhere, let alone in high schools” is singularly descriptive of the situation: rarely would one expect to find a school board willing to approve such a wildly useless class anywhere, let alone in high schools.

In the same paragraph, Wang not only seems to discount “fake” science like, you know, physics and chemistry, but also those silly things we learned in high school. . .what were those called again? Oh, right. Formulas and concepts!

While Wang may bask in her new definition of “science” which somehow has no place for equations or textbooks, the rest of us are dumbstruck by how Frontiers manages to both overreach and condescend at the same time. Among the virtues she extols in the course, the author mentions “reading graphs, understanding some basic statistics…and defining assumptions, among others.” Interestingly enough, I believe I learned how to interpret graphs starting in about fifth grade, basic statistics in junior year, and defining my assumptions in freshman year algebra. None of these things (remember, these aren’t concepts, that’s what fake science is made of!) require a college level course to explain to some of the smartest kids in the nation.

What’s the practical use of this? Wang answers: Being able to “judge the accuracy” of a “CNN poll”. Interestingly, this is also something I was able to do long before I took Frontiers. Quelle suprise.

Never mind that, though, for the fuzzy logic continues. The author proceeds to discuss the “beauty of Frontiers” which, apparently, is that “even if two people have different answers to a problem…they can both be right.” The last time I checked — though I could just be speaking from being wildly misinformed by taking fakey physics and chemistry classes in high school that used textbooks and formulas — one of the great things about science was its objectivity. There is a right answer and a wrong answer, and an explanation for why. In “real” science, apparently, all that matters is that you try.

And yet Wang continues to wonder why Columbia students describe Frontiers of Science as “dumb.” My explanation is this: that single word is more readily available to the tongue than the phrase “mind-numbingly vapid.”

The author, however, is not wrong on everything: Frontiers is a challenging course, and it does challenge us to think in new ways. Frontiers is challenging because the professors are not always qualified, the section professors are not experts on all of the material, the material is wide-ranging and unrelated to anything else covered, the standards are insanely variable from section to section, and the expectations remain unexplained and nebulous throughout the semester. The new ways in which it teaches us to think are, for example, without a textbook, any source of objective reasoning or logic, and instead with a good dose of “well, you gotta figure” science.

Elaine, you are right that Frontiers is not a “joke” — for, if it were, it would be one of the cruelest perpetrated upon the Columbia student body in a long time.