[incogitomode]

A point made in the article's comments — an experienced doctor working in prenatal diagnosis says he struggled with organic chemistry, has not found it relevant to his career, and found biochemistry in med school more approachable. He concludes with:

> It makes no sense that a course so peripheral to successful, high quality medical careers is a gatekeeper > to medical school applications at undergraduate programs throughout the country. [1]

I find it unfortunate how NYU approached this situation, and the idea that students can protest their way out of a rigorous education is troubling. That said, I think this MDs point is excellent and worth consideration in light of a story that might otherwise be more ammo for a meritocracy in decline argument.

[1] https://nyti.ms/3rqZIoZ#permid=120729762

[nh23423fefe]

Cool nobody needs to learn algebra because no one uses it. Learning itself has no value, sends no signal. Gates are bad let everyone in. Struggling is bad and an indication that something in the world should change.

[forgetbook]

Would you evaluate entrance to your roofing company based on a worker's ability to solder circuit boards?

[nh23423fefe]

You are confusing the necessary with the sufficient and ignoring that competence is correlated across diverse tasks.

So yes, I could hire someone based only on seeing them perform at a high level in an unrelated task.

[forgetbook]

How do you think I confuse necessary and sufficient?

[nh23423fefe]

There are lots of necessary tasks entailed in a job, and I could test someone on one of those tasks (if it were suitable in an interview context). But there are other things I could ask someone and their performance on that task would be sufficient to hire them. The retort that only necessary skills should be interviewed against isn't a great argument.

[forgetbook]

Thank you. I meant to address relevant vs irrelevant tasks (soldering =/= roofing, organic synthesis =/= medical diagnosis or performing procedures), but yours is a good point.

(edit: typo) To bring this back to organic chem as a questionably relevant prereq to med school, there are obviously specialties where chem is more or less relevant. I care very much if my pharmacist and anesthesiologist understand chemistry, and less so if my orthopedic surgeons do. To the extent that performance on an unnecessary task is sufficient to hire, the USMLE is a better gate into practicing than an individual med school course grade, and the MCAT is a better gate into med school than organic chemistry. I'm clearly lost in the sauce, both those gates occur after and include concepts from/building on organic chemistry.

That said, organic chemistry is uniquely known as a gatekeeper to med school, more than biology, physics, math, anatomy, and other prereqs. Why concentrate difficulty and training on that component in particular?

[Apocryphon]

Ah, the ol' whiteboarding/Leetcoding in tech interviews debate.

[faeriechangling]

What would be a correct handling of the situation? If organic chemistry is as unimportant to medicine as claimed, and you had a bunch of students whose education was spoilt by a pandemic, and a professor who wants to flunk a bunch of them out, what to do?

Sounds like the administration was in a tough spot to me.

[forgetbook]

Admit that the failure to learn was caused by a failure to teach, strike the grades from the record, and give priority enrollment for a repeat section in the next term?

The instructor operates with the assumption that they'll be teaching the same class next term, so the friction for instructors to teach for a repeat class roster is low. The administration operates with the assumption that students will be enrolling for that class, so the friction for administration to enroll a repeat class roster is low.

It is possible to educate our students to a high standard, without effectively punishing them for failing under faulty leadership.

I haven't even yet suggested the idea that tuition would be waived for the repeat section, because while that argument could be made, the argument I'd like to highlight here is that whatever tough spot the administration percieves requires little more than a willingness to accomodate failure as a part of learning.