I was talking to a friend of mine whose daughter is currently a (U.S.-ian) university student. At this university, as at most others, there are gen ed requirements which students must fulfill in addition to the requirements for their major. One of these requirements is X credits of science classes; evidently, at present you can take any of the science classes that are offered, and they will work toward fulfilling this requirement.
Now, my friend’s daughter informs her that within the next couple of years, the university will no longer permit Intro Psych to count as a science class that will fulfull gen ed requirements (I’m unsure about the future status of other psychology courses).
Granted, even back in the day, Intro Psych was a slacker class that was nothing compared to, say, O-Chem, but that’s not to say that it’s not legitimate simply because it’s less difficult.
So should introductory psychology classes be classified as gen-ed-requirement-fulfilling science classes or not? If not, why not?
As a former Psych/Neuroscience major, I say that Intro to Psych usually straddles the line between the social sciences and other kinds of science like biology. For that reason, I don’t think it should be allowed to fulfill the science requirement. It covers too broad a range of topics and many, like the history of psychology don’t really have much to do with science education.
OTOH, many other psychology classes should be allowed to fill the requirement. Any neuroscience class based in the Psych department should count as well as sensory and perception classes. Statistics at my university was taught in the Psych department and counted as a math requirement.
I don’t think it should. It’s lumped in my JC/University system with the social and behavioural sciences along with sociology and history. (I’m just going with IGETC because that’s what I know…)
As far as graduation or transfer requirements are concerned, for science credit you have to take one physical science (I had astronomy and geology and plan to start on chem. in the spring) and one biological science class. At least one from either category had to have a lab. I think this works out pretty well, and leads to a more well-rounded education at the undergrad level.
Introductory Psych? No. It covers far to broad of a set of topics, doesn’t go into enough detail regarding the scientific method, and is ususally just not rigorous enough to stand for a science core class.
There are a number of later classes in the topic that would be far better for a science requirement than, “Physics for Everyday Life.”
Intro. and lower level psych courses, no. Higher ones like neuroscience yes, but then, odds are you are only taking them cause it’s you major anyways. At my school, psych. was a social science and in the same catagory as history, and so forth. But then, it was a technical school, so al lthe science was hard-as-rock science.
At my school, I took a Psych class called The Brain and Behavior and it counted towards my general science core. I don’t remember much, but it was all about neurons and different diseases which occur when parts of the brain were damaged.
I took it because it fit into my schedule. Still, I think it should count as a science class.
I think the Intro to Psych class was acually counted as a social science core class.
I took an Intro Psych class to fill a social science requirement. I hated every minute of it and was glad that it didn’t fulfill a science requirement. Complete waste of time, but a very easy A. I used most of the lecture time to do my organic homework.
It depends on the design of the course. One can design a rigorous course in psychology that deals with neurological issues or clinical issues. Or research methodology. If it’s the crap/general survey course, then, no. Many places have major dependent science requirements, with a “hard/real” science track: calculus-based physics, real chemistry, real biology and the like versus a “soft/fake” science track:“general science”, rocks for jocks, non-calculus physics, sociology, general psychology…
As currently ladeled/spoon fed to many undergraduates, the sociology/psychology/political science courses rather overlap when taught in a sufficiently shallow manner.
At my super-hippy ultra-liberal school that didn’t have grades, we couldn’t take psych classes to fulfill science requirements- they fulfilled some other requirement, but not the natural science one.
This policy caused me much consternation. Not all of us have the capacity to pass O-Chem. I had to struggle my way through “Geology of National Parks” and “Phsyics for Poets”. Sucked. I felt bad for a moment for all those science majors struggling through their English requirements. But not for long, since English is actually useful for everyone and I am yet to need to calculate the trajectory of a cannonball.
Agree with others that intro to psych isn’t good for a hard science requirement, but yes for social science. I think a good “Intro to Psych Research Methods” course could be designed (with the general intro course as a prereq) that would do a good job of teaching non-science types about science in a more accessible way.
Psychology research methods answers some really interesting questions about what do we know about people and on what basis/ to what degree of certainty do we know it.
This is useful knowledge that helps people function better in society, IMHO. For example, when someone spouts conventional wisdom like “studies show men are better at math” a knowledge of social science research methods is what prepares you to evaluate that claim.
Hard science folks are sometimes very quick to dismiss the idea that we can know anything at all about people, and humanities folks are often too quick to assume we can know undying truths about people from deconstructing poetry.
No problems to figure out? What do you think biologists do in their research? Sit around and memorize things?
And if your bio classes have been all memorization, either you’ve had bad classes (which is a definite possibility, especially if you go to a large research university), or you’ve been approaching the subject the wrong way.
Some of the psych classes I took could have been counted towards my science requirement, such as Perception and Comparative Psychology. Both of those classes involved lots and lots of biology, and very little of what many people probably think of when they hear the word psychology.
Note I said could have–I actually opted for courses in physical geology and astronomy to fulfill my science hours because I felt like using psych would have been cheating somehow. YMMV.