Should We Be Forced?

This past winter break, 480 students at Bard College participated in a mandatory program called Citizen Science, a rigorous, hands-on course that familiarized students with lab equipment and computer modeling, and taught them about all aspects of disease, including detecting germs and managing pandemics.

Bard's president, David Botstein, the brainchild behind Citizen Science, said, “The hidden Achilles’ heel is that while we’ve found ways to educate scientists in the humanities, the reverse has never really happened. Everybody knows this, but nobody wants to do anything about it.”

Students neither receive credit nor grades for their work. Certainly, the initiative allows students who normally would not choose a science-based course to learn without the pressure that inevitably accompanies a graded class.

The National Academy of Sciences, in its 2005 report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," said that the United States "faced a future of economic decline if it failed to make significant investments in research in and teaching of science and mathematics," according to The New York Times.

Thus, the question: should we be forced to learn science, perhaps even pursue it? Even if we're not a "science person?" And what does it mean to be a science person anyway?

Also according to The Times, only 16 percent of American college students received a degree in natural sciences or engineering in 2006. In China, 38 percent of students majored in a scientific field that year.

For those who aren't scientifically-inclined, and don't know how they'd fare in a traditional Chem or Bio course, perhaps Bard's initiative is a good thing, offering students a chance to test the waters--without fear of drowning amidst pre-meds or engineers.

Yet what is really the motive behind Citizen Science? Is it simply to expose the "humanities people" to science (an aim normally achieved through general education requirements)? Or, is it an attempt to gain more "science people"? And can Bard's no-pressure method achieve this goal?

Although there is no grade, the students have a final project. According to The Times, one group project was a dance performance that illustrated how an infleunza vaccine works.

While this sort of thinking is innovative and certainly requires a thorough understanding of the material, if Bard's goal is to encourage further coursework and majors in the hard sciences, perhaps Citizen Science is not the most accurate introduction. (If, on the other hand, Dr. Botstein simply wants the humanities people to have some understanding of science, then this is a unique method to achieve that aim.)

Bard's initiative begs the question: should we learn what we want to learn (within reason), or should we be forced to pursue fields of academia that will make the United States more "competitive" on the global scale? Is our education for ourselves, for the sake of learning, exposure to new things and understanding our place in society, or is our education meant to help our nation "compete"?

It's in bad taste to end a post with a series of questions, but obviously, I'm without the answers.