Monday, September 8, 2008

A t the old ivy-covered university we attended, everybody figured "The History of Art" for the easiest course at the school. Brother, were they wrong. It was a tank trap in the road to graduation.

As summer ends, autumn rituals begin. For college students, that means examining the curriculum for classes to take during the fall. Many will flock to that staple of collegiate life: the "easy A" class. That's not a problem.

It's time we celebrate the easy class, not bury it. As with bats and Bigfoot, its notoriety is truly undeserved.

In this era of soaring college costs, an easy class delivers more bang for the tuition buck, more credits per study hour than anything in the course catalogue. It's energy-efficient: maximum credit, minimum effort, with a GPA-enhancing experience to boot.

And it can be remarkably free of strings. In measured doses, easy credit won't necessarily promote sloth, stifle curiosity or curtail enrollment in more difficult, and arguably more redeeming, courses.

Think about it. An easy class doesn't consume much time or intellect. So students who take it can concentrate time and talent in tougher, academically riskier courses. They may even take them more often when easy classes are readily available. Why? A low grade in a bear course will have less-serious consequences averaged in with an easy A.

In a sense, the easy class is an academic air bag, a crash-protection device for a student's GPA. Or a securely tied bungee that can induce a leap into the incomprehensible, say, a three-credit-hour gamble on Sumerian hieroglyphics or electromechanical astrophysics.

And the notion that only hard work and sacrifice breed success? To begin with, what makes an easy course easy? Subject, teacher or student? How many times has a difficult class been redeemed by an easy-grading professor? And for a genius, most classes are easy.

There's also considerable merit in pursuing the shortcut, finding a faster, safer route to riches beyond the college horizon. (No one considers Vasco da Gama a lazy sailor.) Look around: Not only did the intellectual elite take easy courses in college, they also occasionally teach them. Morally, it's like clipping coupons, not dodging the draft.

So, how do I happen to know so much about the easy-A class, you ask? Empirical research, many years ago.

Take, for instance, the course that's an easy A for every student in the class, except you. (Hint: It's hard to survive in a class with students who've taken four years of college-level Latin when you've had it for two years in high school.) Buckle down and do very well in an extremely difficult class, and courses in a related area may prove very easy.

And then there's my genre-bending, all-time favorite easy class, Principles of Chess.

I enrolled to repair my GPA after advanced calculus took a chunk out of it. For once, it wasn't my fault. Adding my scores on the various problems on the final exam, the math professor made an error, which reduced my grade in the course from B to C. He acknowledged his mistake but refused to correct it. (Perhaps he was embarrassed by irony. What self-respecting mathematician can't add?) Since he was the department chair, I had no recourse.

Only after he entered the classroom did I realize he was an instructor for Principles of Chess.

To assess the students' ability, the three instructors divided the large class into three sections, and each simultaneously played the 14 or so students in his section. My luck, I drew my former calculus professor. Terrible luck for him, he lost to me, the only game the instructors didn't win. The other students, who'd hung around to witness the outcome of our hard-fought match, cheered.

Afterward, the professor took me aside. "Don't come back," he said. "You'll get full credit for the class."

It wasn't the easiest course I took in college, but it was the most gratifying.

-- Anthony E. Harris, Washington