Currently, NYU Shanghai's undergraduate curriculum consists of the Social and Cultural Foundation core requirements, which must be completed over the course of a student's freshman and sophomore years. “Global Perspectives on Society”, the freshman compulsory course, was experienced by the pioneering class of NYUSH over the past year, and the time has come to reflect on it. Before criticizing GPS, let’s first address why the class is appreciable. An interpretation of the course is that its purpose is to introduce students to new ideas and question the universality of ideas. Overall, such a goal appears both gallant and imperative, especially considering a student's well-being and developing global awareness. So, what, then, is the issue of this quintessential class? Be assured, the issues with the course do merit evaluation. The first problem is in regard to plenary. As many know, all freshmen must attend the weekly GPS plenary to participate in a seminar. Plenary usually consisted of two elements: Professor Lehman would discuss the texts a little, then move on to questioning students. The coverage of texts during plenary was, for a significant part of the year, very basic and without detail. To be fair, towards the very latter part of the second semester, texts were covered slightly more holistically. The second element, of questioning students, comes under scrutiny because this had many adverse effects unrelated to teaching. Those called on during plenary were obliged to answer any and all questions asked by the lecturer that day. Moreover, students were called on without prior knowledge or permission. Not only would these questions seldom speak of the texts and take up time that could have been used to analyze said texts, but the student's answers would often be manipulated to serve the purposes of the lecturer. In many instances, being placed on the spot and forced to speak in front of three hundred plus people made some people very uncomfortable and caused much anxiety. Surely, the purpose of plenary was to teach, instead of being an ordeal for students. Needless to say, this method was unpopular among many individuals within the student body, as it ultimately became a tool to check if students actually read the texts rather than an educational device. Nevertheless, this inquisition did produce interesting results. Indeed, instances where the more comfortable students would produce thought-provoking answers or different opinions did occur. Unfortunately, this was a rare event, as this process often led some to spontaneously invent disingenuous answers; yet another consequence of having students answer randomly. More often than not, the lecturer would misrepresent a response by trying to summarize it or forcing it to conform to their pre-existing lessons. Thus, students unwilling to correct or argue with the professor in a plenary of three hundred would often agree with the manipulation of their ideas, despite the injustice of its meaning. It would be entirely unfair to characterize GPS plenary as prosaic, for surely there were instances when plenary was lively or very captivating. Examples would be the guest lecture series or plenaries which hosted active debates on relevant issues. Monotony, however, certainly had its place, as the structure of plenary remained rigid, adhering to the same format for most of the year. Monotony is truly the enemy of education, for students who fall victim to a course's monotony quickly lose interest in said course, and hence do not receive from it what they should. It is a tragedy, thus, that the monotonous structure of plenary prevailed for as long as it did. Let me be clear, this is not to the fault of the lecturer; in fact, large lectures or seminars that lack multifariousness are usually inherently monotonous. This is why the introduction of relevant topics and guest lecturers to the plenary was such a success. However, for most of the year, students were forced to participate in the tedium of an invariable plenary, causing many to either sleep or engage in other productive endeavors during each weekly session. Like plenary itself, the assigned GPS texts for the first semester were humdrum. Every week, students were expected to read several different pieces in preparation for the next week’s GPS classes. Though this seems like an effective study strategy, texts seemed to fall into the categories of “too challenging”, “too mundane”, or “too nugatory”, which often created a barrier between the students and readings. This barrier was further fortified by two almost constant characteristics: First, most texts were immensely long. Second, most texts were homogeneous in origin, particularly in the first semester's readings, as they were usually representative of the elite, Caucasian male demographic or Chinese philosopher. Nonetheless, some might argue that there were many instances of text heterogeneity, and such a claim is certainly true – in regard to the second semester of GPS; the diversity of texts was on a completely different level. As far as the first semester is concerned, however, any variety whatsoever usually manifested either as the token non-Caucasian writer, or specifically during topics of race. Ergo, the first semester's diversity was monochromatic, to say the least. Now, let’s shift our scope of analysis to the GPS writing workshop. This class was the most instructive of all components within the GPS course. Here, students learned and practiced writing academic essays and research papers, and were presented with the rigor and challenge suitable for a college student. In fact, many have argued that GPS should give 6 or more credits for just such a reason, as this section alone required much outside work. Still, this component also had its problems. The main issue with the GPS writing workshop was the limitation to GPS topics and texts. While professors would instruct students to use outside sources on their papers, the topics still had to pertain to GPS by using GPS texts mainly for arguments. Hence, all other sources became supplementary. This limited students’ education to create arguments or persuade via essays, as the benefits of using researched sources was placed on the back burner. By not permitting any useful or important texts from the professor or students to be used as the main substance for papers, students had to forge fake, previously non-existent connections between unrelated GPS works and topics. Unless the purpose of academic writing is to make up textual relationships, students were not given a proper writing course, but rather a course teaching how best to create substance from nothing. Let’s again shift gears to focus on the GPS recitation. Like plenary, recitation was sometimes the venue of discussion regarding texts. Many a great professor took the role of recitation leader in these courses, and successfully directed dialogue in the class. The productivity of the class was not constant, as students would either choose not to discuss or attend at all. Furthermore, success of students in this class was highly dependent upon the efficacy of the GPS instructor, rendering the merit of students’ work almost useless. Perhaps, however, the greatest tragedy of GPS lies in the course's very objective. As mentioned earlier, the goal of GPS was to expose students to many, sometimes universal, ideas. From these ideas, students would hopefully develop their own opinions, discovering truths via means of argument and textual analysis. This, in itself, is a very ambitious task; perhaps even too ambitious. By giving the students too many texts, too much work, too many hours of class time, and too many topics to cover, the objective quickly became lost. Indeed, many students received high marks in this course without ever completing readings, or attending plenaries or classes. So, the question that arises is this: How is it that many students, who put in minimal work, received good grades in the course? Certainly, the grades did not reflect how much a student learned, but rather how good they were at feigning textual connections and attending class. Ironically, for many who did choose to attend, recitation and plenary became a venue for additional sleep. What does this say about the effectiveness of the course? Does this mean that the readings were incredibly important? Was class time itself imperative to a student's social development? Then, other questions arise. Does the fact that students do not actually need plenary and recitation render plenary and recitation obsolete? However tempting it might be to answer yes, the answer is no. Students did, actually, learn many valuable lessons in plenary and recitation. Examples would be the definition of “normative” and “empirical” truths, the Socratic method’s flaws, how to answer a question in a way that satisfies the professor, and, most importantly, the hyperbolic connotation of the phrase “it depends”. This judgment of GPS might seem harsh to some, but, if anything, this critique has been quite minimal. The writing workshop certainly improves a student's ability to write academic papers, recitation did sometimes contain interesting, thought-provoking discussions, and plenary did present some unique ideas and host wonderful lecturers. This article was not meant to hurt or provoke any vengeful responses. It is hopeful that since GPS is an obligatory course for all freshmen at NYUSH, it will improve to become a useful, fair, and reasonable course, benefiting students in exactly the way it originally set out to do. This article was written by Nicholas Sanchez. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: NYU Shanghai