Eliot Sherman: Threatening mutiny on the pilot curriculum

Looking back on my life at the tender age of almost 20, I realize I should really pay more attention to things. You know, the details of life.

Today's lesson comes from way back in high school, during the vacuum between senior year and college. It was at some point during those innocent months that my father walked into my room and mentioned something about a pilot curriculum brochure that came in the mail, but I was distracted and heard "pirate curriculum" and really should have known better.

Oh sure, laugh it up, as if you knew anything about college before you got here. And why was I distracted, you ask? Well, maybe my franchise was 10 years in and desperately trying to stay under the cap.

If you can relate, then you understand. If not, you're probably spending altogether too much time being a productive member of society.

A pirate curriculum would be great, you know. It could teach courses on swinging from things and saying "arrr" a lot and for no apparent reason, and, of course, the venerable pursuit and celebration of precious booty. But alas, it was not meant to be.

Instead I got the pilot curriculum. For the uninitiated, the pilot curriculum is an experimental program that offers students a choice of classes within four required categories of learnin'. This greatly reduces the number of requirements a student needs to fill and allows more time to be devoted to shaping a more personal path of study. But beyond that, the curriculum is designed to teach learning itself; encouraging "thinking outside the box," and discouraging the age-old eat it up, spit it out, forget it all style of learning that is the status quo nationwide.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in the idea of less constraining requirements that better allow a student to personalize their curriculum and major. I fully intend to use this to design a major in journalism. Extracurricular activities will include drinking heavily, disproving that old adage about the impossibility of a free lunch and generally sticking my nose where it doesn't belong.

Even more, I believe in the pilot curriculum's approach to learning. I believe in questioning everything and I believe that the best demonstration of knowledge does not manifest itself in the form of textbook answers to textbook questions. We do not live in a textbook world and in a few years it's a good bet that you won't remember the classification for table salt (NaCl) or why you thought you needed to know it.

The point is not to regurgitate your best guess of the expected and appropriate answer. Ideally, the point is to get you thinking about something you wouldn't have considered yesterday, to open up your mind to new ideas that seemed impossible beforehand.

Realistically speaking though, I am not for a second naive enough to believe that this is how it works in practice.

The pilot program does offer some innovations in teaching. Besides the improved flexibility, many courses are team-taught. This can lead to some pretty entertaining disagreements between professors, which are pretty interesting. But overall, the idea is better than the execution.

While you only have to fulfill four requirements, your flexibility within those requirements is non-existent. And there are no easy outs for us non-science people, like the "History of Science in Film from Jurassic Park to The Matrix, or "Even Numbers: Friend or Foe to Mathematics?" The team-teaching element can also lead to professors forgetting that they aren't the only ones assigning work, which has the potential to get ugly.

Overall though, the simple fact is that at the end of the day, the pilot program doesn't seem that different from the general requirement.

If the pilot program wishes to innovate teaching and learning, it should innovate grading and assignments as well. Reading and regurgitating philosophical tests is about as refreshing as the new U2.

How about an assignment that asks you to design your own philosophical school of thought? Or how about having a week where students teach the course and assign work to the professors?

Whatever it is, it needs snap, or pop, or a certain I don't know what, as our transatlantic friends would say. Otherwise, what's the point?

But if the pilot program truly seeks to innovate higher education, the gloves should really come off. Otherwise you're all getting scurvy.

Eliot Sherman is a sophomore from Philadelphia, Pa.

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