And so goes my first introduction to Frontiers of Science. This video not only made me seriously consider Columbia as a pretty cool place to go, but made me actually think that Frontiers would be cool to a geek like me.
The subtitle to Frontiers should be: where smart people sound incredibly dumb.
Last class, after a lecture on the way the brain localized language, about 3 people asked very similar questions about their personal linguistic history (ie. “Um, I grew up in like, a bilingual family, and I speak like, Icelandic and Hindu, and then at the age of 7, I learned French, but not very well, and now I’m learning Japanese. How are these languages arranged in the brain?”). It frustrated me to no end because (a) it sounded like they just wanted to show off their multi-lingual backgrounds (well, fuck that, everybody at Columbia speaks at least 2 languages fluently) and (b) they completely missed the take-home message on this one.
According to this facebook group, Frontiers has succeeded where thousands of years of religion has failed: it has made people not believe in science. Sadly ironic, this is the reason why I personally dislike Frontiers. As a student with the advantage of a strong scientific background, I actually enjoy the broad and interesting topics that Frontiers covers. However, this jam-packed curriculum gives non-science students (whom I have nothing against, really) the illusion that they have learned pretty much everything there is to learn about science. This illusion then gives them the balls to say completely ignorant things and ask ridiculous questions such as “Why can’t we find the center of the universe?”
The course is set up in a discouraging way; one that doesn’t allow the actual elegance and beauty of science to cross over to the students. The weekly homework assignments are either tedious or boring and ultimately turn our young minds off.
Although I realize that much of the dislike for the course is partly a failure in the Core Curriculum, I really just want the non-science idiots (who I am sure are very competent outside of Frontiers) to STFU and stop negating a most exciting subject that has gone right over their heads.
