2008 Woodie Awards
Letter: Well-rounded grads require GER courses
Issue date: 12/8/06 Section: Opinion
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To the Editor:
Throughout the past several months, I have been following the news of the cirriculum review that is currently taking place on campus. Whilst I am currently abroad in Vienna, Austria, I have still kept up with what has been going on on campus via The Hawk online, and I have noticed one disturbing fact: everyone is debating about which courses to cut from the GERs, but no one has spent anytime defending the GERs as they exist presently.
I am not sure if everyone on campus is aware, but being part of a Jesuit school means being well-rounded and able to discuss every issue reasonably well, and having an opinion on every matter (something I learned from Quintillian, which I read in Fr. Burch's English class my Freshman year). It also means being able to talk about global warming (a topic in this past week's Hawk, which requires a rudimentary understanding of Natural Science) foreign languages (another hot topic this week), Catholic social teaching (yes, even the Jesuits have to mix in some Christian teachings) national politics (yay extreme moderation!), and so on. Just within the opinion section of this week's paper I have listed Theology, social sciences, foreign languages, natural sciences, and more. These are all things which we study at SJU, and things which I hope we keep studying! If you did not wish to spend between 20 and 21 of your 40 college courses studying GERs, maybe you should have gone to a state college or Villanova.
As I said above, I am currently studying abroad; well, I will tell you that the students from Jesuit colleges at my program (and we have reprsentatives from SJU, 2 of the Loyolas, and BC) fair far better than the other students. When it comes to the classes I am studying, Philosophy, German literature, education, and Art, I find that I know things and am able to discuss matters with the professors that other students--students who did not have the blessing of a well-balanced Jesuit education--cannot. We may be an elitist school filled with men and women for all seasons, but I would much rather be a renaissance man able to discuss everything--even those topics which I find boring or difficult and the study of which I did not in the least enjoy--than one of my colleagues here in Vienna. For these unfortunate souls finding out that there exist subjects other than the one in which they major--and that it is possible to work philosophy into political science (ask Dr. Farr how) or string theory into a theological debate (quick, I need a young priest and an old physics prof)--is a massive ego-killer. I'd like to thank Sigmund Freud, whom I studied in Dr. Bernt's pyschology class, for the "technical" terminology of that last statement. My point is simple: SJU students enjoy a wealth of experiences through our GER that makes the men and women for others that we are called as Jesuit students to be. In my mind, adding or subtracting from the SJU GER will only hurt the reputation and incredibly strong commitment to Jesuit academic rigor which we currently enjoy; the GER should remain intact for future generations of hawks to study, learn, and live by.
Michael Critzer'08
Throughout the past several months, I have been following the news of the cirriculum review that is currently taking place on campus. Whilst I am currently abroad in Vienna, Austria, I have still kept up with what has been going on on campus via The Hawk online, and I have noticed one disturbing fact: everyone is debating about which courses to cut from the GERs, but no one has spent anytime defending the GERs as they exist presently.
I am not sure if everyone on campus is aware, but being part of a Jesuit school means being well-rounded and able to discuss every issue reasonably well, and having an opinion on every matter (something I learned from Quintillian, which I read in Fr. Burch's English class my Freshman year). It also means being able to talk about global warming (a topic in this past week's Hawk, which requires a rudimentary understanding of Natural Science) foreign languages (another hot topic this week), Catholic social teaching (yes, even the Jesuits have to mix in some Christian teachings) national politics (yay extreme moderation!), and so on. Just within the opinion section of this week's paper I have listed Theology, social sciences, foreign languages, natural sciences, and more. These are all things which we study at SJU, and things which I hope we keep studying! If you did not wish to spend between 20 and 21 of your 40 college courses studying GERs, maybe you should have gone to a state college or Villanova.
As I said above, I am currently studying abroad; well, I will tell you that the students from Jesuit colleges at my program (and we have reprsentatives from SJU, 2 of the Loyolas, and BC) fair far better than the other students. When it comes to the classes I am studying, Philosophy, German literature, education, and Art, I find that I know things and am able to discuss matters with the professors that other students--students who did not have the blessing of a well-balanced Jesuit education--cannot. We may be an elitist school filled with men and women for all seasons, but I would much rather be a renaissance man able to discuss everything--even those topics which I find boring or difficult and the study of which I did not in the least enjoy--than one of my colleagues here in Vienna. For these unfortunate souls finding out that there exist subjects other than the one in which they major--and that it is possible to work philosophy into political science (ask Dr. Farr how) or string theory into a theological debate (quick, I need a young priest and an old physics prof)--is a massive ego-killer. I'd like to thank Sigmund Freud, whom I studied in Dr. Bernt's pyschology class, for the "technical" terminology of that last statement. My point is simple: SJU students enjoy a wealth of experiences through our GER that makes the men and women for others that we are called as Jesuit students to be. In my mind, adding or subtracting from the SJU GER will only hurt the reputation and incredibly strong commitment to Jesuit academic rigor which we currently enjoy; the GER should remain intact for future generations of hawks to study, learn, and live by.
Michael Critzer'08
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