Curriculum - Do You Remember What Courses You Took?

[Philip Coates]

Mike H, and anyone else who was a technical or science or math major, it would be very interesting if you wanted to list the courses and their sequence you took in those fields. That will help people who are into 'self-education' think of things they might want to explore further.

I don't mean to restrict it to the sciences - hearing from those who had a liberal arts major or professional field would be interesting as well.

I'll start off by doing it for myself - I'm sure I'm missing many courses I don't remember:

1. Primary School thru Junior High:

--very little science that I can remember until 7th and 9th grade "general science" (life science, lite chemistry and physics, earth science, lite astronomy and meteorology)

--(standard) arithmetic

--history: american [-no- world history or exposure to egypt, greece, rome or the ancient world that I can recall at the moment]

--english: standard grammar, spelling, vocabulary, literature, composition

--languages: started french and latin

--minor classes: music? art? geography?...I don't remember when or how often...p.e. was not a class, it was often just recess and occasionally an organized game like dodgeball.

--after school/extracurricular: science contest, singing, acting in two plays, chess club

2. 10th through 12th grade:

--math sequence: algebra I --> geometry --> algebra II (included trigonometry and what is now called "pre-calculus") [analytic geometry wasn't covered: since I was going into math, I took it one year in summer school / solid geometry wasn't included very much, so I had almost none]

--science sequence: biology-->chemistry-->physics

--languages: continued french and latin

--history: american

--after school/extracurricular: speaking and writing and history contests, math competition, track and cross-country

3. college [math major, physics minor]

-- two out of four courses each semester / half the courses I took as an undergraduate were math**. included: 1 year calculus (theoretical and proof, almost no applications), linear algebra and matrices, abstract algebra (groups, rings, fields..), differential equations?...lots of other stuff which I've forgotten...

-- physics: 1 year survey, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics...

-- humanities and social sciences: freshman composition, econ 101 (samuelsen's "economics" text), poli sci 101 (english, french, american systems), european history, french literature, religious studies/comparative lit, american literature, psych 101, philosophy 101, 20th century american history...

--after school/extracurricular: track and cross-country, humor magazine, elected school offices, oist club

4. grad school (master's in math**, 3/4 of courses were math, 1/4 a minor in philosophy)

--algebraic geometry, advanced calculus, set theory, topology...

--philosophy: philosophy of science, british empiricists...

--after school/extracurricular: oist club, political activism

** What I -didn't- have was applied math or engineering of -any- kind. And no other technical or science besides the standard bio->chem->physics: I took fewer technical courses than I could have, and instead loaded up as much as possible in the liberal arts.

Edited August 23, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Jonathan]

I think we should also list the paying jobs that we had when we were children through young adults. I'll start off by doing it for myself:

1. Primary School thru Junior High:

-- Dog walking: Mrs. Pribbenow would pay me a nickel to walk her dog around the block.

-- Lemonade stands: Joint ventures with several other neighborhood kids.

-- Lawn mowing: Mrs. Meyers, Mrs. Nelson and the Methodist Church would pay my brothers and me $5 to mow their lawns each week.

-- Leaf raking in the fall.

-- Snow shoveling in the winter.

-- Babysitting: Usually paid 3-5 dollars for watching two kids for 3-4 hours.

-- Housesitting: When the local Methodist pastor would go on vacation, I'd keep an eye on his house and feed his dogs.

2. 10th through 12th grade:

-- Bean walking: Local farmers would hire us kids to walk their soybean fields and kill the weeds and "volunteer corn."

-- Hay bailing.

-- Sign painting for local businesses.

-- Pencil, charcoal and pen and ink portraiture.

3. college

-- Played in various bands.

-- Designed ads and brochures for local businesses

-- Won lots of free food, cash and prizes from McDonald's and other companies' sweepstakes and promotions.

J

[Reidy]

Math: couldn't have learned it without school; got as far as calculus but have not remembered or needed anything past first-year algebra.

Reading: can't say I learned anything.

Handwriting: another skill I learned in school and have used ever since.

Typing: got an F but still as skilled as I need to be, especially not that you can get rid of errors by backspacing.

Foreign languages: couldn't have learned them without a start in school, though I know two better than I did then and have forgotten the third.

Philosophy (major): still remember a lot of it and still profit from the ability to do exploratory surgery (and occasionally lethal injection) on an assertion or an argument.

Music, art, architecture, driving, cooking, wine (not all at once): never learned a thing except in one night-school class on Wright.

Software (occupation): never learned it in school, though philosophy taught me boolean functions before I came across them in programming.

Apart from philosophy and languages, everything useful from school I could have learned in three years starting at about 10 - 12.

Edited August 23, 2011 by Reidy

[PDS]

I think we should also list the paying jobs that we had when we were children through young adults. I'll start off by doing it for myself:

1. Primary School thru Junior High:

-- Dog walking: Mrs. Pribbenow would pay me a nickel to walk her dog around the block.

-- Lemonade stands: Joint ventures with several other neighborhood kids.

-- Lawn mowing: Mrs. Meyers, Mrs. Nelson and the Methodist Church would pay my brothers and me $5 to mow their lawns each week.

-- Leaf raking in the fall.

-- Snow shoveling in the winter.

-- Babysitting: Usually paid 3-5 dollars for watching two kids for 3-4 hours.

-- Housesitting: When the local Methodist pastor would go on vacation, I'd keep an eye on his house and feed his dogs.

2. 10th through 12th grade:

-- Bean walking: Local farmers would hire us kids to walk their soybean fields and kill the weeds and "volunteer corn."

-- Hay bailing.

-- Sign painting for local businesses.

-- Pencil, charcoal and pen and ink portraiture.

3. college

-- Played in various bands.

-- Designed ads and brochures for local businesses

-- Won lots of free food, cash and prizes from McDonald's and other companies' sweepstakes and promotions.

J

Hay bailing sucks. This much is true.

[caroljane]

I think we should also list the paying jobs that we had when we were children through young adults. I'll start off by doing it for myself:

1. Primary School thru Junior High:

-- Dog walking: Mrs. Pribbenow would pay me a nickel to walk her dog around the block.

-- Lemonade stands: Joint ventures with several other neighborhood kids.

-- Lawn mowing: Mrs. Meyers, Mrs. Nelson and the Methodist Church would pay my brothers and me $5 to mow their lawns each week.

-- Leaf raking in the fall.

-- Snow shoveling in the winter.

-- Babysitting: Usually paid 3-5 dollars for watching two kids for 3-4 hours.

-- Housesitting: When the local Methodist pastor would go on vacation, I'd keep an eye on his house and feed his dogs.

2. 10th through 12th grade:

-- Bean walking: Local farmers would hire us kids to walk their soybean fields and kill the weeds and "volunteer corn."

-- Hay bailing.

-- Sign painting for local businesses.

-- Pencil, charcoal and pen and ink portraiture.

3. college

-- Played in various bands.

-- Designed ads and brochures for local businesses

-- Won lots of free food, cash and prizes from McDonald's and other companies' sweepstakes and promotions.

J

Jr High and high school

raking blueberries, you have to be short and stalwart. None but the brave.

University. Cafeteria work. Unknowingly met an objectivist.Aiee!

[Philip Coates]

What I learned from doing post 1 -- surveying seventeen years of education and summarizing it in a single page was very valuable.

I can now tack this up on a mental wall. And, over time, step back and evaluate what worked, what didn't, where I 'stared out the window' for years at a time...and by contrast which of the three 'blocks' of my formal education was incredibly valuable, made me smarter or much more knowledgeable. And what this single page "roadmap" tells me about my efforts to continue lifelong learning.

But it was only doing this in a systematic way that worked well: The concrete - and comprehensive - detail turns out to matter enormously.

[it would be valuable to myself to lay out in similar form the next step: all the 'self-education' and 'plugging the gaps' in my formal schooling that came in the next period of life.]

Edited August 25, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

What I learned from doing post 1 -- surveying seventeen years of education and summarizing it in a single page was very valuable.

I can now tack this up on a mental wall. And, over time, step back and evaluate what worked, what didn't, where I 'stared out the window' for years at a time...and by contrast which of the three 'blocks' of my formal education was incredibly valuable, made me smarter or much more knowledgeable. And what this single page "roadmap" tells me about my efforts to continue lifelong learning.

But it was only doing this in a systematic way that worked well: The concrete - and comprehensive - detail turns out to matter enormously.

[it would be valuable to myself to lay out in similar form the next step: all the 'self-education' and 'plugging the gaps' formal schooling that came in the next period of life.]

Well at least you are still getting your period...

[Brant Gaede]

Here is my commentary on all this: [_______________________________________________________________]

--Brant

[9thdoctor]

I think we should also list the paying jobs that we had when we were children through young adults.

You know what would be even more interesting? If each of us could provide a chronicle of our toilet training. Wouldn’t that be cool? A lot of parents film their baby’s first steps, but who keeps a proper record of when baby first did number two in the pottie bowl? I’d like to know that date, it seems like such an important step in the development of concept formation skills. Not to mention mind/body integration.

C’mon Phil, apologize…

[caroljane]

Here is my commentary on all this: [_______________________________________________________________]

--Brant

Brant, please extrapolate. The rest of us have bared our juvenile souls here.