Like most schools, Temple students are required to take General Education, or Gen Ed, courses regardless of their major. Students may have a headache planning out Gen Ed courses, especially when it comes to weeding out boring professors or difficult classes. Save yourself from stress by taking these 10 easy Gen Eds – your future self will thank you:
Art
1. Shakespeare in Movies
You may see Shakespeare listed here and groan in dismay, but this class has a lot more going for it than those exhausting English classes you finally escaped.
The class mainly consists of watching Shakespeare movies like Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night. It’s a really great movie class because its a mix of learning and watching movies based on his plays which makes the classroom environment more relaxing.
2. World Music & Cultures
Did you know Chinese melodies only use five notes? Or that Japan actually counts silence as a structural element in music? Artists all over the world use their cultural values to create their own style of music, and in World Music & Cultures you’ll learn how the cultural values of society mold an artist’s creative imagination.
Students listen to guest musicians with very different styles of playing and get to attend a live concert. They examine folk, art, and popular music from around the world and discuss the wonderful and strange sounds that are produced by it.
Human Behavior
3. Teens and Tweens
Remember being a pre-teen or a teenager in high school? Those were the best, worst and honestly most confusing times of our lives. This course takes a look on the lives of pre-teen and teen years and their development.
This class uses literature, TV and film, as well as articles and books from the field of human development to explore how children grow into teenagers, how they survive the challenges of adolescence, and how they become productive adults.
4. Youth Culture
This class takes you back to your teenage years by examining the fashion and social trends that accompanied it. Youth Culture teaches students all about their own culture and trends and how it evolved throughout the years. You’ll learn how hip hop, social media and the latest trends change and affect the lives of not only American teenagers, but the rest of the world.
This course helps students understand the younger generation better and see how each generation keeps changing every year.
5. Meaning of Madness
Sybil, Fight Club, Silence of the Lambs… if you’re interested in any of these movies, this class will make your Human Behavior gen ed feel more like play than work. In Meaning of Madness, you’ll learn about different type of mental illness, how it affects different types of people and what those words actually mean.
Students will dive deeper than dictionary definitions, too, as they study biological, social, and cultural factors that influence mental illness, perceptions of individuals with mental illness and treatments of mental illness over time and across cultural groups.
Race and Diversity
6. History & Significance of Race in America
If you’ve got any interest in learning about the history of race and minorities, then you’ll love this class. You’ll focus on different racial groups in the US, exploring how the government treatment of different races varied throughout the American history, and examine the racial diversity of America and its enduring consequences.
U.S. Society
7. Religion in Philadelphia
In a country that is founded on freedom of religion, you can find some pretty varied religious landscapes if you look— especially in Philadelphia. Religion in Philadelphia explores the idea of numerous religions that many ethnic and immigrant groups practice in the City of Philadelphia, where they live.
Students will look at the influences that religion has had on Philadelphia’s history and cultural life including politics, art, education, journalism and popular culture. Students will be visiting and writing about various religious sites and institutions, when taking this course.
World Society
8. Global Cities
Do you know how changes in the global economy affect the lives of people from Cairo to Chicago, or how massive rural to urban migration in China and India affects the global environment?
Global Cities teaches students about understanding the world around us, digging into globalization and how it affects different countries economically, sociologically, geographically, etc.
They also teach how each social class are affected in living in these cities and how that city affects another city from another country, which is very interesting.
Science and Technology
9. Disasters: Geology vs. Hollywood
You may never look at Sharknado again the same way, but that’s a small price to pay for everything you’ll learn in Disasters: Geology vs. Hollywood. Students learn about natural disasters and how Hollywood movie portrays them versus how they actually happen in real life.
It also teaches students about disasters preparedness and calculate when one will occur, making it one of the few classes you’ll definitely be able to use in real life.
10. Exploring the Cosmos
Have you ever looked at the stars at night and wondered how about its’ creation, or looked at the in the morning and thought about why it looked like that? Exploring the Cosmos introduces students to the basics of astronomy and the current understanding of the extrasolar Universe, from the history of the universe to how ethics, science, and different cultures play into that aspect.
Also, students will get to visit the planetarium and observe the galaxies from an actual telescope.