This semester, Georgetown University is offering a popular course titled: “Sociology of Hip-Hop: Jay-Z.”
I’ve used clips from Office Space, The Office, and The Apprentice to engage a classroom, but is a whole course based on pop culture going too far?Should there be some push-back at a course where the professor “parses Jay-Z’s lyrics as if analyzing fine literature?”
While some readers may disagree, I have no issue with the class itself. There’s always room for out-of-the-box electives. I took The World of Insects at Rutgers.
My main concern is that for many students, this course is not a supplement to an otherwise rigorous course load. Georgetown junior Stephen Wu made this argument quite well in an opinion piece in the Georgetown student newspaper:
“It speaks volumes that we engage in the beat of pseudo-music while we scrounge to find serious academic offerings on Beethoven and Liszt. We dissect the lyrics of Big Pimpin’, but we don’t read Spenser or Sophocles closely.”
This is nothing more and nothing less than Frankfurt School cultural communism. The goal is to take culture, history and public esteem from those who supposedly have too much of it (principally white males) and give it to those who ostensibly don't have enough (chiefly women and blacks). And the ubiquitous charge of racism (sometimes in tandem with criminal charges) is deployed to ensure that whitey does not fight back. The end result is cultural decline and degradation, and a coarsened, dumbed down society that knows not from whence it came and therefore knows not its true identity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd they wonder why they can't get a job after their demanding college curriculum?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm one of those who disagree. There should be no room at all for such a class as that in a university with a serious core curriculum and serious majors. The one college I know about with an extensive core curriculum already requires more credits than average.
When I was in college there were what were called "informal classes" sponsored by the student union with offerings like this (though nothing quite so stupid that I can recall). I can't believe parents and students are paying a fortune for junk -- or that anyone would want such a thing on his resume.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"World of Insects," though, sounds fun and halfway plausible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseKinda like Donald Trump hosting a debate.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhich is why this heartfelt, if not a bit snobbish, defense of the "useless education" seems so odd. (link below) His pining is for something no longer available from the modern university. Also, if the great books are so great, why is there not a Great Books for Engineers course, while there are many variations of the Math for Humanities majors course? Instead the GE courses STEM majors are offered, are of the Sociology of Hip Hop variety.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Also, if the great books are so great, why is there not a Great Books for Engineers course, while there are many variations of the Math for Humanities majors course?"
Actually, some schools do offer such courses, and have even been known to require them of their STEM students.
Frankly, I don't think it is such a bad thing to have scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians who have also been encouraged through the study of great texts to engage with the Western tradition's grand search for goodness, beauty, and truth. In fact, I think that it can be a very good thing. After all, that is what got us to where we are today.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wonder how many Asian students will be wasting time in a class like this?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf other people are mostly if not entirely paying for your "educational experience" and if you believe that the thing that really matters is just getting your degree, why not take classes like that? And if you run a college and believe that most of your customers hold that view, why not offer such courses, which are low in cost and make the students happy?
It's just like the fitness club that has exercise machines that don't burn any calories, but make you giggle while using them.
Oh -- there aren't such machines because people pay their own money to go to fitness clubs and don't want to pay to waste their time.
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