OPINION: There are one or two courses here at the University of Maine that pretty much every student takes. Almost every student, with the exception of those transferring in Early College credits, takes English 101: College Composition. This is because the course teaches fundamental writing skills that are essential for almost every major here at UMaine.
I’d argue there are other fundamental skills essential for every student that are not being taught. I think that making Sociology 101: Introduction to Sociology a required course would be to the benefit of every student, regardless of whether they’re in STEM or Humanities.
Sociology 101 covers the fundamentals of society. It covers topics like social strain, societal conflict, discrimination and deviance through a critical lens aimed at understanding where societal problems come from. It teaches about race and gender as social constructs. It discusses all the different ways that people interact with society. It describes how factors like socioeconomic class, race and sexuality impact the way one experiences the world. These are things that are now more important than ever to teach in light of the recent push at a federal level to deprioritize learning about things like race and diversity.
Students in every major would benefit from learning about things like this. Every major interacts with societal factors. The tie is most obvious for Humanities students. As an English major, I’ve extensively studied literature from marginalized communities like Black Americans, which has required an understanding of the conflicts that Black Americans face on a societal level. A History major’s studies would likely include the developmental history of these societal constructs of race and gender.
However, STEM and Business courses would also benefit from learning the concepts taught in an introductory sociology course. Women and racial minorities experience a lot of discrimination in these fields. The glass ceiling as a concept relates to the experience of women in the business field. Every student experiences society through the lens of all their statuses. We cannot remove ourselves from the concepts covered in SOC 101. Every student should know the factors that affect themselves and their peers in academia on a broad scale.
The most important benefit from requiring SOC 101 is teaching students cultural sensitivity and empathy. A lot of students are uneducated or misinformed on things like class and racial struggle. This isn’t because they’re fundamentally ignorant at heart, it’s because they might not have been afforded the opportunity to learn in the past. They don’t understand how deeply rooted something like racism is in society. College should be designed to combat a student’s missing educational opportunities in the past.
A final benefit to making SOC 101 a required class would be the boost it would give to the school’s Sociology program. Students being required to take this course would bring more attention to the program and find people who might end up really liking the course and enrolling as a major or minor in the program. Every student on this campus should understand cultural sensitivity. There’s a cultural gen ed requirement currently, so there’s a precedent for this. SOC 101 could take the place of one of these credits as a required course.
