Math and Computers Deserve a Place

FOLLOWING UP on a survey that showed 78 percent of undergraduates would like to see some math and computer science courses count for Core credit, the Undergraduate Council has, very sensibly, come up with a proposal to do just that.

Though the proposal--to establish a new sub-area within the Science area of the Core--will most likely meet with opposition on the student-Faculty Core advisory committee, it is at least an attempt to convey student dissatisfaction with the Core. All the same, the council should submit a thorough report to the committee, putting it in the context of the Core's academic philosophy.

At the very least, the proposal will be an effective way of conveying student gripes. No Faculty member would disagree that introductory math and computer science courses have a role in a well-rounded education. And the proposal just may make the Faculty question a body of courses which has no place for such general knowledge as Math la, Fine Arts 13 and Music 1.

The strongest argument against setting up a new sub-area of the Core is that it would add one more requirement to the hefty burden students must now juggle. Specifically, several faculty members have said that establishing a Science "C" area would lure students away from the "A" area courses. Even if this is true, though, it should make the Faculty infer that "A" area courses apparently do not have what students are looking for. The better approach would be to include the courses in question within the existing Science "A".

Math and computer courses fulfill the Science "A" objective of courses to instill analytical and quantitative ways of thinking. The biggest stumbling block for including math and science courses might be that Science "A" purports to be limited to an examination of the physical world, as the course catalogue states. But problems dealing with the physical world--using calculus and computer functions--differ only semantically from the problem sets assigned in current Science "A" courses.

The proposal, finally, indicates students' desire to strengthen their computational skills. And it underlines once again the problem with a Core structure which discourages students from doing just that.