In Defense of Required Courses

The scene is familiar to all of us. Trying to conceal a yawn, you peer at the incomprehensible gibberish on the SmartBoard, and then glance ruefully at your blank notebook. You think to yourself: What’s even the point of biology? Why do I have to take this class? When am I going to use any of this? Why am I even in this school?

We’ve all had the experience of suffering through a painfully boring class against our will. And given this experience, it’s tempting to want to do away with required classes altogether—after all, we are happier and more motivated learning what we actually want to learn. But required courses at Stuyvesant, and indeed schools in general, serve two incredibly important functions.

The first of these is compelled career exploration. At the start of high school, many of us have no idea what we want to study in life; I certainly know that I didn’t. And an even larger percentage of people might think that they know what they want to study, but will go on to change their minds. The reason we’re forced to take a number of classes that we didn’t choose for ourselves is because just maybe we’ll find a new interest in life that we never would’ve found otherwise.

Sure, you might hate biology. Many people do, and I was certainly one of them. But you might love it, and that’s what matters. There are almost certainly dozens of people every year who have not considered a career in biology-related fields, but later find their life’s passion taking the course. And there are dozens of others who have the same experience in classes like Chemistry, Physics, and more. I found my calling through my Introduction to Computer Science (CS) class. I’d resisted my older brother’s advice of joining the school’s robotics team (he had been a programming lead at Staten Island Tech’s team), because CS seemed weird and alien. I wasn’t convinced at all that I would like it, let alone be any good at it.

But, as I little could have guessed, I absolutely loved it, and I decided that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Now in my senior year, with the ability to finally select my own courses, I’ve decided to take numerous CS electives. I can absolutely say that I’ve enjoyed these electives far more than I enjoyed Freshman Biology. And I am sure that there are people who right now are taking Genetics or Human Diseases, which they enjoy far more than they did Introduction to CS. But it’s doubtful that I would have found these classes without being forced to take an Introduction to CS class first, just as Biology majors may not have found their calling if they had not been forced to take a Freshman biology class.

There’s another very different reason why required classes are critical: they can help us become better and more informed citizens. Stuyvesant students are some of the smartest students in the country. Many of us will go on to become great engineers, doctors, physicists. But even if we’d rather take a class suiting our future major, or even if we’re not interested at all in classes like history, or government, or economics, it’s extremely important that we do take these courses.

When we grow up, we’re going to assume all the responsibilities of being good citizens, like serving on juries, paying our taxes, and casting informed votes. For some of us, that will happen as soon as next year. The strength and effectiveness of our democratic system rests on an informed citizenry casting an educated vote. When that doesn’t happen, elected officials are held unaccountable and free to make poor choices that can adversely affect the entire country.

It shouldn’t be hard to see why a knowledge of government, or history, or economics is essential to that process. Without a knowledge of how the economy works, or of themes from our history, it’s impossible to truly cast an informed vote.

For you, it may be more fulfilling to take a course that you would want or have a free period, especially if you’re not interested in subjects like government. But if everyone holds a mindset that their personal enjoyment of their courses is more important than their being an informed citizen—and by extension the well-being of the country—we will all be worse off. And that’s why courses like government, history, and economics should be required. They might pique our interest in the same way that biology or chemistry might, but even more importantly, they provide a societal benefit far greater than the cost of those 41 minutes.