This school year, we’ve seen plenty of changes to the Oak Park High School course catalog. Introduction to Engineering Design was given a follow up course in Principles of Engineering, and the semester-long IT Essentials and Cybersecurity classes previously offered here have now been replaced with AP Cybersecurity Kickstart 1 and 2.
What we do not see is an emphasis on the social science and humanities classes that seem to fade more and more with time. For example, the Senior Seminars—potentially some of the most interesting classes our school has to offer—seem to be overshadowed by the confines of AP Literature.
“Senior year, you have a lot of options, but not as much as when I started here,” social science teacher DJ Cook said. “I used to teach a class called Geopolitics in the World Today, but at the school and this community, there were a lot more protests about the curriculum.”
Cook believes that climate science education, as well as other core knowledge, is essential for future members of society to learn.
“We used to have a class called life skills that had a carry on a baby for a week kind of project [and] we had a life skills retreat,” Cook said. “We also had more electives, and in the 90s and early 2000s at this school they literally said, ‘write a class; we’ll give you 200 bucks.’ People would write syllabuses, and that would create a class if enough people signed up for it. A lot of that diversity has gone away as far as class selection here at the high school.”
While intriguing classes such as the history of rock and roll still exist at our school, interest seems to be going down. Cook believes that these unique electives have gone away for a couple key reasons.
“Couple reasons, [one being that] they got rid of SATs and ACTs as a requirement for college, which put more of an emphasis on AP classes,” Cook said. “When you put more of an emphasis on AP classes and the GPA you get with it, more people sign up for those classes and opt out of the electives.”
Along with aiming for more difficult course rigor, the idea that the humanities are inherently less valuable than STEM has pushed students away from studying these key subjects. For example, while a number of students still study humanities at universities across the country, the amount of humanities degrees awarded has continued to fall every year, dropping by almost 25% from 2012 to 2020.
“STEM is where the jobs are,” English teacher Kathy Schultheis said. “Humanities is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and that is to be regretted. Yet, if I was a parent, I would say you need to be able to code.”
STEM curriculum is undoubtedly growing for a reason, and without dismissing the importance of expanding opportunities in these fields, it is equally important to cultivate humanities passions as well—if not for their own merit, at least for their ability to aid and inspire STEM advances. Case in point: Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was inspired by philosopher David Hume, writer Jorge Luis Borges was the one to first suggest quantum mechanics, and even medicine was influenced by Hippocrates.
Inserting more classes that are able to effectively combine both while also including the honors/AP element will help out massively. In fact, The College Board provides 40 AP courses of which Oak Park High School offers 25. Among these remaining 15 courses are humanities electives including AP African American Studies, AP European History and AP Human Geography.
“The fact is, we are a more diverse society,” Schultheis said. “We need to read Indian myths, Asian mythology, we have to read the Analectes of Confucius. However, that requires sending teachers to institutes to study.”
Overall, adding classes is easier said than done, but creating a strong balance between STEM and humanities will help developed well-rounded students.
“I think science is an incredibly important way of solving problems, but history teaches you what the problems of the past are so you don’t repeat them,” Cook said. “Mark Twain famously said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’”
