A couple of questions:
When and how did the term “Basketweaving 101” become part of the American lexicon for a particularly easy college course?
Are there any colleges or universities that actually offer classes devoted to basketweaving for credit? I’m not talking about continuing education classes; I’m wondering about real Basketweaving 101 classes.
I’m positive there was already a thread on this. Ah yes…
Yuo can enroll at the California State University at Chico. They have courses ranging from Intro to Underwater Basket Weaving all the way up to “Deap Sea Underwater Basket Weaving *prerequisite: scuba certification.” I suppose you are expected to get all of your landbased basketweaving credits in high school.
If CSU Chico doesn’t offer graduate degrees in basketweaving, where did the faculty get their PhDs? There must be an eminent basketweaver somewhere that they studied with. Or maybe it’s a field like computer science in the 60s, where the faculty holds advanced degrees in a related field (e.g. math, for computer science, or recreation for basketweaving) because the discipline is too new to have advanced to the point where the faculty can hold advanced degrees in it.
This is the case, see the faculty link on the original link, or just click this.
This phrase first appears in newspapers in the early 1950’s. The actual phrase was simply “basket weaving” and quite often the additional info was given about how it was merely an easy course, usually for a football player.
The “underwater” modifier appears in the late 1950’s.
I believe it was related to the Foxfire books, which celebrated the discovery by a group of college students of traditional Appalachian arts and crafts. I don’t remember exactly when the books came out, or when the contacts they were based on occurred, but I’m pretty sure it was a mid-60s thing.