If we can force students to read Hawthorne, to listen to Mozart, or look at Dali, then why can't we also force them to go outside? Why isn't the appreciation of nature just as important as cultural appreciation? Hell we even force our students to run laps so they will appreciate their health. Why is it so unreasonable to force them to take a hike?

I recomend making a 1 credit hour "outdoors" course required for all students. If I was still at NCSU I would start a pretition. But maybe someone else can take up the cause in my stead.

8/13/2005 3:56:16 AM

would it really be all that great for the environment to have 27,000 kids tromping through there because they have to?

8/13/2005 3:57:22 AM

^ I've never been to "the enviroment", so I'm not sure how many people could fit there safely. I also pity the teacher that has to take care of 27,000 students.

8/13/2005 4:02:52 AM

Quote :

"then why can't we also force them to go outside?"

Too many engineers have lost their resistance to sunlight. It would be fatal to force them outside.

8/13/2005 9:59:58 AM

Most people go outside already, Socks``. They do not celebrate Kwanza or watch foreign films though. A little culture is a good thing.

8/13/2005 10:17:05 AM

What would be the goal of having this class?

We take humanity classes because it is expected of a college graduate to have some understanding of such fields. While it isn't important for my major that I know about British history, it does distinguish my degree from one gotten at ITTT.

As far as I know, there is no such expectation for a graduate to "appreciate nature".

Besides, Eminem tried to get that chick on his first CD to appreciate nature, and THAT turned in to something MAJOR, believe me.

[Edited on August 13, 2005 at 10:22 AM. Reason : ]

8/13/2005 10:22:11 AM

Quote :

"They do not celebrate Kwanza"

and neither should ANYONE. it exploits a fucking race and is little more than "HEY! lets be glad we are black. yaaaaaaaaaay." gimme a fucking break

oh, and I watch plenty of foreign films. Mike's Apartment fucking ROCKS!

8/13/2005 11:57:49 AM

Jerry O'connell

8/13/2005 11:59:21 AM

Its called Forestry and NRE courses, sign up for one if you want to go outside

8/13/2005 1:10:39 PM

I doubt this would have the affect you'd intend it to.

8/13/2005 1:25:08 PM

Quote :

"If we can force students to read Hawthorne, to listen to Mozart, or look at Dali... Hell we even force our students to run laps..."

Never had to do any of that at NC State. I have listened to Mozart on my own though.

8/13/2005 2:02:59 PM

Quote :

" I've never been to "the enviroment", so I'm not sure how many people could fit there safely. I also pity the teacher that has to take care of 27,000 students."

SOOOOO
this thread is either a big troll
or you're just a little bitch

WHICH IS IT BOY

8/13/2005 2:10:15 PM

Unless all your classes are in one building, most people have to walk around campus anyway; I think they get their outside time. Forcing people to go outside to appreciate nature may cause them to be resentful of the experience. You can't force someone to appreciate something, anyway.

Oh, and to suggest that celebrating Kwanzaa is somehow a real cultural experience is asinine. Invented in 1966, it is not a reflection of any actual African ritual and is only based on what Dr. Maulana Karenga decided were cultural practices and values of Africa (and considering how big Africa is and how many different tribes there are, this in itself is crazy). Incedentally, Dr. Karenga was something of a maniac; he was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment for beating and torturing two women who were living with him in 1971. He accused them of poisoning him and when they denied it, he proceeded to beat them with an electrical cord, torture them with a hot iron, and threaten to shoot them both in the head.

8/13/2005 4:01:31 PM

Quote :

"As far as I know, there is no such expectation for a graduate to "appreciate nature"."

-Locutus Zero

Umm maybe they should? Saying that appreciating nature isn't currently required isn't a good explaination for why it shouldn't be required.

And I don't believe walking to and from class is enough for students to truly appreciate nature. In the 15 minutes it takes to move between classes, exactly how much can you contemplate the beauty of nature? And how often do folks know what they're looking at? How many trees do you think the average student can name? Or hell, how many can even describe the basic evolutionary processes that would produce a tree (reading the SB i can say not many).

8/13/2005 8:55:41 PM

I, for one, second the motion. It'd do us all a lot of good to get out and see where we came from.

8/13/2005 9:20:41 PM

Take a freakin' Zo class. Many of 'em will force you to go outside at least once or twice...

8/13/2005 10:25:53 PM

i took a group of highschoolers on a "wafting" trip with this guy named riverdave down the eno river this past spring. he was explaining all the different types of trees and animals, little signs you can pick up on about pending weather, the history of the river, where it flows to, the wafting trips he's taken, etc. it was a good change of pace for them i think, kind of centering . . . it boggles the mind how much time kids (and people in general) spend indoors nowadays.

it's like i heard someone suggest on the radio the other day that corporations are conditioning society to think that the only pure water to be had comes out of a bottle. maybe if we got outside more, we'd be more ardent about keeping our waterways clean.

8/13/2005 10:31:24 PM

Quote :

"Its called Forestry and NRE courses, sign up for one if you want to go outside"

just sign up for dendro. you'll spend plenty of time outside and be forced to ID all the trees.

8/14/2005 9:17:22 AM

Quote :

"Umm maybe they should? Saying that appreciating nature isn't currently required isn't a good explaination for why it shouldn't be required."

In your effort to simplify what I said, you confused my point. In your two uses of the word "require", the entity that is doing the requiring is different. Nature appreciation classes are not something that people care if I take or not. There is no demand for me to know the difference between one tree and another. And since the only reason to require a student to take a class is that the class has information that is in one way or another valuable to the student (who is paying for the class), there is no good reason to require such a class.

Besides, I'm pretty sure there is room in most degrees to take such a class as a humanity or whatever.

8/14/2005 2:51:05 PM

^ and that isn't a good reason for not having Nature Appreciation courses. Just because people don't care doesn't mean they shouldn't. Get your shit together or go argue about emo bands in Chit Chat.

PS* ZO and Forrestry classes are not required (the point of the fucking thread), plus they each are to specialized for what I want. I would like to see people learning about plants AND animals. Not to mention I would like people to learn more than just scientific facts. How about the aesthetic properties of nature?

8/14/2005 6:09:40 PM

Well, firstly, I would say the burden would be on someone saying there SHOULD be a requirement rather than someone saying there shouldn't be. And I'm just not convinced by your argument.

8/14/2005 8:22:55 PM

i imagine nature appreciation courses would be comparable to sex ed courses in that they might teach responsible practices such as conservation (or the use of contraceptives in terms of sex) and show the effects of irresponsible practices such as polluting and the squandering of natural resources (like discussing the risk of std's).

if this type of information were disseminated more widely, i'm sure environmental protection would be more of a hot button issue. then maybe future generations could reverse some of the damage we've done. without it, who knows where we might be in 100 years? maybe paying for tanks of clean air like we're now paying for bottled water.

8/14/2005 11:47:35 PM

Maybe they should require that class for LIBERAL arts students.

8/14/2005 11:58:24 PM

by the nomenclature, you'd think CONSERVATIVE students would be interested too.

8/15/2005 12:15:42 AM

saving nature costs too much

8/15/2005 12:18:05 AM

i think people tend to be a little myopic on the issue. NOT saving nature would eventually cost us our lives. i mean, maintaining a thriving economy won't mean much when we're dead.

8/15/2005 12:27:11 AM

Plenty of issues I feel strongly about, don't mean the university should force other people to hear what I think.

8/15/2005 12:37:52 AM

oh, i agree. a class like this should be taught at the elementary/highschool level.

8/15/2005 12:46:47 AM

Locutus Zero,

I've given the argument, but i'll repeat it for you.

My argument for a nature appreciation course isn't much different than one you would hear advocating mandatory health or literature courses.

Going to college isn't just about job training, it's about becomming a better individual. We don't only learn how to build bridges, we learn how to take care of ourselves and we learn how to appreciate fine literature. Or at least that's the goal. We do this to teach students about beauty (for lit) and to teach them things they might learn otherwise (like taking care of yourself in health class).

We should recognize that there is also more than man made beauty and the sad fact is that many people might not be aware of the beauty of nature around them. Realizing the splendor of nature is just as much apart of being a well rounded individual as being able to quote Hawthorne. And with competition from indoor recreations (video games, tv, tww) it's possible that many might never be exposed to the natural world around them. Simply, I advocate stirring the animal spirits of our collegate youth.

8/15/2005 1:59:37 AM

I didn't say I didn't understand. I said I wasn't convinced.

As far as I know, PE is the only required class here.
And I don't think it should be.

In response to the first big paragraph, I disagree with the opening remark. I sure didn't come here cause I wanted some people to make me better.

In response to the second paragraph, I can agree with all of it, just not the idea that the school should point it out for me. Hell, I think pot is great. I don't think enough people realize how much it can enrich a life. There should be a requied class about pot.

8/15/2005 2:05:56 AM

^

1) I don't know how it works in your major, but in the BS for Economics I had to take several Humanities and SS classes, at least 3 credit hours of whcih HAD to be literature.

2) What you're here for makes no difference to the goals of this institution. One of the goals of America's higher education system is to make people more well rounded and cultured human beings. I challenge you to find anything put out by State that says the one and only goal of NCSU is job training. Or to make it easier for you, I may get the combo at Wendys for the Cheeseburger, but that don't mean it don't come with fries and a coke.

Now, if you want to argue that we SHOULDN'T try to improve students, then that's a different argument and one you havn't provided any reasoning for.

3) Well, part of the reason of going to a school like State is that you will be shown those kinds of things. If you wanted job training you should have went to ITT Tech. And there is a reason for that. We don't know everything as students. There are many things we don't even think about until we get here (except you, i'm sure you knew everything all along). The point of having a well rounded education is being exposed to these things we wouldn't normally be exposed to. And I believe that one of those things students should be exposed to is natural appreciation. That isn't to say we should take everything teachers give us as gospel truth. We should think things over for our selves and come to our own conclusions.

Now, maybe you want to argue that NC State should be like ITT Tech (if that's your argument I don't know why you didn't go there to begin with), but so far you havn't given any good reason for dismantling the current system.

8/15/2005 2:27:57 AM

Quote :

"1) I don't know how it works in your major, but in the BS for Economics I had to take several Humanities and SS classes, at least 3 credit hours of whcih HAD to be literature."

That's different college to college. Pretty sure the only university-wide requierment is the 2 PEs.

Aren't the nature classes considered humanities?

8/15/2005 2:37:48 AM

Like I said...I don't know about your major. But I have never heard of a major that didn't require one.

And no. The nature courses (Forrestry and ZO) count toward your science credit. Or at least they do in the college of Management. Plus, I took Natural Resource Conservation and NEVER went outside. And the nature appreciation course would be more than a science course, it would probably best be described as a humanities course with technical aspects.

8/15/2005 2:52:57 AM

Who said anything about science?

[Edited on August 15, 2005 at 3:14 AM. Reason : eh, i misread]

8/15/2005 3:09:42 AM

^ well if you're not talking about FR or ZO (the only courses mentioned specifically in the thread), then what "nature" courses are you talking about? Those are both science courses.

Seriously, are you just flamming? Because you have yet you respond to me other 2 points a couple of posts ago. I think you are. I know you like to argue, but don't like to think much.

8/15/2005 3:13:10 AM

Eh, it's bad enough having to take PE classes... do we really need to be forced to do more stuff?

8/15/2005 5:27:32 AM

i'd take an outside class if it got rid of a humanities requirement.

8/15/2005 9:03:49 AM

well thats the real trick isnt it... allow us to be more free by forcing us to do more things

at one time i would have agreed with socks'' about college being more than job training. and outside of the classroom, it is. however, honestly, thats a pie in the sky thought given the climate of today's market. do you honestly think that many students WANT to be in computers and/ or engineers? nope, but they can come outta there, work 40 hours a week and rake in tons of money to spend it anywhere else they want.

its not really about "culture" anymore, its more about getting what you need to get done and getting outta there so you can make money. and i personally think that's kinda sad.

8/15/2005 12:11:09 PM