New study shows college students lack common skills

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Asher
I understand the purpose of analytical reading.

Analytical reading just uses reading, then adds the extra layer of analysis. Analysis comes after you read something. That much is common sense.

And reading 100 novels in a French Literature class, using analytical reading, is busywork, how?

[Asher]

I define busywork as work that is genuinely useless.

And given that I consider analyzing literature to be pretty useless, that would make reading 100 novels of French Literature a useless endeavor.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Bull****. Analytical reading looks for themes and concepts behind the mere text. It isn't just, wow that's a fun story. Compare those who read for fun "The Lord of the Rings" and those who have actively analyzed the text, pulling out themes dealing with industrialization (as one example). It's a vastly different enterprise.

If you don't consider that part of reading for pleasure, I can sorta understand your infatuation with Harry Potter.

[Asher]

[Arrian]

Translation of thread:

Asher is incredibly arrogant about his intelligence (actually, about everything, AFAIK). Asher denigrates the liberal arts at every opportunity.

Conclusion: Asher doesn't understand things like History or Philosophy, and therefore must belittle them, lest he admit weakness.

-Arrian

[Last Conformist]

Back in the good old days, the liberal arts were grammar, rhetorics, dialectics, arithmetics, geometry, astronomy, and music. How did you anglophones end up with the present use of the term?

Anyway, neither bashing humanists nor kicking engineers out of university is going to help with wide segments of the population lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills, which allegedly was the subject of the thread.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
If you don't consider that part of reading for pleasure, I can sorta understand your infatuation with Harry Potter.

I understand you are being silly, but there are plenty of powerful themes in the Potter books, .

If you looked at the thread, you'll note that many people (the hardcore fan) read once through quicky for the story and then read through again, slower, to find things in the text that you may have missed the first time. The first read through was a basic read for pleasure, the second time through was an analytic view, knowing the plot, but looking for foreshadowing of events and seeing if anything references other mysteries. They are quite different techniques, which is why there are two seperate readings of the same material.

OTOH, the non-hardcore fan won't do the second readthrough, content with knowing the plot without some of the other nuance.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Arrian
Translation of thread:

Asher is incredibly arrogant about his intelligence (actually, about everything, AFAIK). Asher denigrates the liberal arts at every opportunity.

Conclusion: Asher doesn't understand things like History or Philosophy, and therefore must belittle them, lest he admit weakness.

-Arrian

How can somebody not understand history?

I say history and philosophy are jokes of an undergraduate program, because they simply are. People can defend it all they want, the simple fact is it's trivial to coast to an undergrad degree in most of the arts. That's why the degrees aren't worth much of anything at the bachelor's level.

History still has a place in universities, mind you. Modern philosophy, not so much.

Honestly, if Agathon can get a PhD in Philosophy with the kind of arguments he spews on Poly, you gotta know something is wrong with that system.

[Last Conformist]

Considering how much work my brother had to put into his "C thesis" in history (the American equivalent might be a Bachelor - something less than a Master, at any rate), I wouldn't call it trivial, exactly.

Now, he won't get a job from that degree, but that's because there are no jobs for historians, period.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Considering how much work my brother had to put into his "C thesis" in history (the American equivalent might be a Bachelor - something less than a Master, at any rate), I wouldn't call it trivial, exactly.

Now, he won't get a job from that degree, but that's because there are no jobs for historians, period.

A thesis is not something done at the undergraduate level, and a thesis of any kind of a huge pile of work.

I'd still reckon your average science thesis is a pile more work than your average history thesis...

From Wikipedia:

At Canadian universities, writings presented in fulfillment of undergraduate coursework requirements are normally called papers, term papers or essays. A long paper presented for completion of an honours degree is sometimes called a major paper, or, more rarely, an undergraduate thesis or honours thesis. Major papers presented as the final project for a masters degree are normally called theses; and major papers presenting the student's research towards a doctoral degree are called dissertations.

[Apocalypse]

I go to a 10 top engineering school and the two easiest classes I hav this semester are in the math building and the science building. With my psychology tests, I have to compete with other people for grades (this is where curves are detrimental to you and you can put in more work than the engineers and while they can all get As and Bs in their class, there are only a limited number of those for us). These people also have the the best SATs on average than the other majors here. Engineers have come in and switch to psychology because they thought it would be easier and then got stuck failing a class 2 or 3 times before just giving up.

The engineers here also seem to have a habit of watching DVDs while doing homework too and quite easily handling the courseload. Again, this is from a top 10 engineering school in the country.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Asher

A thesis is not something done at the undergraduate level, and a thesis of any kind of a huge pile of work.

I'm starting to get the impression Canadian undergraduates do nothing at all ...

The thing my brother did is (supposedly) equivalent to the ten-week project *** report done as the final project by our three-year engineers, which in turn are (supposedly) half as much work as my master's thesis.

[Asher]

Aren't you in first year of a military school?

Let's compare a Computer Science thesis to a History thesis.

Which one looks like more work?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I'm starting to get the impression Canadian undergraduates do nothing at all ...

Canadian (and American) undergraduate studies are typically 4 year course-based educations.

Masters degrees can be either course-based or done with a thesis (usually people who go on to PhDs have a Masters thesis).

PhDs all involve dissertations as far as I know.

[Last Conformist]

You won't get any technical degree at all here without some sort of thesis. I shan't I know for medical and humanist, but I think it's the same there.