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My ds is very interested in culinary arts and plans to pursue a degree in that field. For high school history he has done American, 20th Century World and Ancient History (used History of the Ancient World). This year for history he would like to do the Great Courses Food: A Cultural Culinary History. However, he's also developed a strong interest in ancient history of Central and South America (mostly Aztecs, Mayans and Incas) and wants to spend more time studying those cultures. We've purchased GC: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed. Should that count as his history course for his senior year and make the culinary history course an elective? He's already earned an elective credit in culinary arts, so this would be another. Or should we keep the culinary history course for history and make some kind of elective (The Study of Mesoamerican Cultures?) for the other. I think he will end up spending more time on the culinary history course.

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I do not understand the distinction between "history" and "elective". He can have multiple history courses; electives can be in academic areas and can be listed among the other courses of that field.

I have all courses listed in the subject areas where they belong and do not distinguish. We have extra math, extra physics, extra languages...

Edited by regentrude
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I organized our transcript by year, so I never had to designate the subject area for each class. Here are the things I would consider if you are organizing by subject:

 

1, does your son need more history credits? If so, put it there.

2, will it be more easily noticed by a culinary school if you group all things related to culinary skills together? If so, that might tip the balance for me towards putting it with his other culinary elective.

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I think it depends on how many hours he wants to put into each subject, the types of output he wants to do, and the topics he would want to research and/or write on. How do you plan to grade him for the Culinary History course? How many other resources you do have? Will he have no trouble putting in 120 hours on that topic, or would he rather do it as a half credit at 60 hrs?

 

You mentioned that he wants to study the cultures of Central & South America; the Mesoamerican course doesn't cover the Inca, Moche, or any of the other South American groups. The course for those cultures is called Lost Worlds of South America, by Prof. Barnhart. Together those two courses equal 60 lectures/30 hours. Do you have texts & readings to fill that out? Is he looking for a full credit or a half credit? Would he rather write essays about PreColumbian civilizations or culinary history?

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We're new to the GC lectures, but if each one of those courses (plus any extras) is about a 0.5 credit, why not do one for Semester 1 and the other for Semester 2 and call the year-long activities "Senior History Studies" or some such thing, for a full 1.0 credit.

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Great suggestions! Thanks everyone. I'll have a talk with ds to see with which course he wants to put forth more time and effort. That will help us decide how to arrange it on the transcript. I really don't feel like he's going to have the time to earn a full credit for both.

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