Academic standards hits bottom, starts digging
From the
New York Post:
SCHOOL OF ROCK
It's the university of reading, writing and "Guitar Hero."
NYU undergrads coughing up $50,000 a year to attend the Greenwich Village institution can earn college credit for playing air guitar and kickboxing this fall.
Psychology prof Gary Marcus is offering a freshman seminar on video games and human cognition called "Guitar Heroes (and Heroines): Music, Video Games and the Nature of Human Cognition."
"Video games are an understudied area," said Marcus. "People dismiss them unfairly, but 'Guitar Hero' is a good tool for teaching and I'm interested in the nature of learning."
The course will tackle questions such as: "Why are human beings so easily sucked in by video games?" The class, which Marcus capped at 16 students, had a waiting list, he said.
And the parent's aren't saying anything? I went to Boston University and had the time of my life studying Biology, Physical Oceanography (including several months down at a marine lab in the Bahamas), Astronomy and Genetics. They worked us hard but the education was top notch and the teachers a lot of fun. I was offered a job at the New England Aquarium so dropped out for a while and then these computer things happened so I never went back to finish but I took a lot away from the two years I was there. The idea of wasting my time on phony classes like these is deplorable -- the graduates will be fit for little else but asking if the customer wants fries with their happy meal...
Posted by DaveH at August 31, 2009 12:04 PM