Introducing US students to new concepts

While most US students pore over textbooks for their university philosophy or sociology courses, a lucky few will be watching Star Trek or heading to the local cafe to chat up the regulars.
And it will all be in the line of educational duty because intellectual offerings such as "Philosophy and Star Trek" or "The Cafe and Public Life" are deadly serious courses at some of the best institutes of higher education in the United States.
The Star Trek class, you might joke, boldly goes where no philosophy course has gone before. The course that revolves around the cult TV show is like a university introduction to philosophy, but with the added allure of being a good excuse to watch the adventures of Mr Spock and Captain Picard.
"There is this hook of the Star Trek episode showing the philosophy right there on the screen," professor Linda Wetzel said. "You can see exactly what the issue is rather than reading the philosophers." If music is more your thing, sign up for "Walk Tall: Political Themes in the Lyrics of Bruce Springsteen" at the State University of New York at Potsdam.
"The text of the course is Springsteen's lyrics. Students have a lyric sheet for every Springsteen album, and we listen to probably every album. They listen to the album in class and take notes. I comment in between tracks and then we spend an hour or so discussing the album," professor Tom Massaro told AFP.
Massaro also teaches a course on the politics of basketball, which looks at "everything associated with basketball including the game in the way a political scientist looks at a country," he said. Courses in a similar vein at DePaul University in Illinois look at the role of bicycles in politics or the Chicago Marathon and urban renewal.
What some see as oddball courses are seen by the professors who teach them as a way of introducing students to new concepts through a medium they are familiar with. "In the Springsteen course, we might start out talking about Springsteen and end up talking about why Congress doesn't do much about poverty in the United States," Massaro said.
Alfred University in New York state offers a course that looks at history from the perspective of the Britain's Monty Python comedy team. Students at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky can take "The Art of Walking" and look at the works of German Idealist philosophers while out for a stroll through central Kentucky parks, farms and Civil War battlefields. They can also examine the links between the basketball hoop and higher things in a course called "Basketball and religion". Or they can chat up total strangers in the local cafe for a sociology course called "The Cafe and Public Life."
"We visit every cafe in the middle of Kentucky," said course professor Beau Weston. "I send students out in small groups. They go and observe a cafe and talk to strangers. "The main questions they ask are: are you a regular, do you know the other regulars, have you had conversations with them, what sort of things do you talk about, how do conversations get started" and conduct their own sociological study into the cafe as a key place to forge human relationships. Courses such as Weston's on cafes, Massaro's on Springsteen or Wetzel's on Star Trek are not without their critics, who judge the content to be trivial and the course matter to be a waste of time and money.
Often, the criticism is based on the course title alone. "I could teach a course called Quantum Physics', which no one would criticise because it has a serious title. But it would be a joke because I know nothing about quantum physics," Massaro said. "But the minute you say Springsteen instead of Shakespeare or basketball instead of the politics of Great Britain, you're bound to draw some ire."
Occidental College in California, meanwhile, offers a course called "Good sex". But before students rush out to sign up or critics start complaining to the school trustees, it should be pointed out that "Good sex" is not a hands-on practicum but part of the religious studies curriculum that looks at Christian sexual ethics.