Florida Board of Governors Votes to Remove Principles of Sociology from List of Core Courses
“The change is still subject to a final vote in January; currently, the core course list is open to public comment.”
This is still not final, but Florida has an excellent track record on these issues in recent years.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Florida Looks to Remove Sociology From Gen. Ed.
The Florida Board of Governors voted on Nov. 9 to remove the Principles of Sociology from the list of core courses that the state’s public college students can take to fulfill their general education requirements. The news shocked sociology professors across the state, who say the ripple effects of such a decision could be disastrous.
Students often rely on the course to satisfy the social sciences general education requirement. Indeed, many sociology departments consider it their bread and butter; at some of Florida’s largest institutions, the course can easily draw more than 100 students per section. It’s also the class where many sociology students first learn about the discipline.
“A lot of students are not exposed to what sociology is in high school,” said Rachel Paul, a senior at the University of North Florida who is minoring in sociology. “I did not know what the word meant until college. I found out through that intro class,” which she took at a friend’s recommendation.
The change is still subject to a final vote in January; currently, the core course list is open to public comment. But many of the state’s sociology professors argue that upholding the vote will not only impact department enrollments, but also be a great disservice to students, who will lose out on the lessons an introductory sociology class can offer.
“It’s really important for students to understand that human behavior is not just a factor of individual level characteristics, right? That there are larger social structures at play,” said Alison Cares, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida who teaches an introductory sociology class.
Critics of the move believe that the course is being targeted because it covers race, gender and sexual orientation, topics that have drawn intense backlash and in some cases have even been banned by conservative politicians in Florida and beyond.
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I remember taking intro to soc. The professor said explicitly that the purpose of sociology is to use science to change society. He was also a proud communist.
Actually quite a nice guy and a good teacher, believe it or not. But he made it clear that the entire field is corrupt and completely unscientific, though it claims the opposite.
Conclusion: Removing the requirement for the intro course is too small a step. Now remove ALL sociology courses completely.
Sociology is a sham course of study. It’s what you major in if you’re too stupid to get a degree in any other major.
“The news shocked sociology professors across the state, who say the ripple effects of such a decision could be disastrous.”
Phrenologists hardest hit.
Publish or Perish.
They are required to think up and write about NEW social problems.
I saw a post about a University spending $18M on salaries for DEI people.
Imagine if someone “fixed” it.
Do you think they would all quit?
Heck No!
It must get 10% worse each year or the budget would need to be cut.
And they pretend that by studying a “sociology of Xxxxxxx” there is zero effect on the very thing that they are studying.
If you put a TV camera in front of any group of humans, it’s going to have an effect on the way those humans behave and interact.
But sociologists live in their own bizarro world of denial …………… pretending that there’s no “significant” impact on what they’re studying when they descend on a neighborhood, for sample, and pass out surveys, and conduct interviews, etc., etc.
What a bizarre worldview to live and work in.
“The news shocked sociology professors across the state, who say the ripple effects of such a decision could be disastrous.”
For their nonsense jobs they mean. I remember taking a couple of sociology classes in college to fill my credits out and thinking what a waste of good time they were. Bastion’s of woke progressives and communists who were not smart enough to major in a real discipline. Great at spewing the latest tropes and mouthing platitudes but education and understanding of the real world a mile wide and inch deep.
my undergrad degree is in Behavioral Science . . . . . Psych and Sociology and I approve this action by Board of Governors. Another descriptive for ‘sociology’ is ‘bunkem’ . . . . . . . but you don’t know that while a student.
In the spring of 1965, in the second semester of my freshman year at a good college (Washington and Lee), I was allowed to take one elective — which was a very good thing, because my other college courses had been in the same subjects I had studied in high school and I was becoming disillusioned with college.
I found myself in Intro to Sociology. The teacher (James Leyburn) was stupendous. The course was stupendous. I was very intellectually excited. I learned a lot about human behavior that I needed to learn. Sociology became one of my three majors, and I went on to climb significant intellectual mountains (including a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Mind).
However…in recent years the Sociology/Anthropology departments in U.S. colleges have devolved into Woke breeding academies.
Sociology has much of value to be taught — but like much of contemporary U.S. higher education, it needs reengineering.
I recall from the days back in the engineering department, the opinion about sociology was about as cynical as it could be – and they hadn’t yet invented all the competing brands of Angry Studies in those days.
This move will be a hard one for that Board of Governors. To separate the useful courses on human behavior from the various ingroups of soreheads, good only for political organization, may be beyond ordinary human abilities. It may well turn into a mere test of the First Amendment.
Sociology always struck me as a field invented for liberals. I don’t recall their ‘science’ doing anything scientific