For like a decade now, America’s high schools have been slipping behind the rest of the… For like a decade now, America’s high schools have been slipping behind the rest of the world in achievement and test scores. In sharp contrast, our colleges are the envy of nations, but this shouldn’t lull us into complacency. If we get too comfortable, we could be staring down the barrel of the No 20-Year-Old Left Behind Act.

Clearly, this issue begs a question on the part of educators and students alike: “Where will you lead us, Lewis?”

I propose a return to the basics.

At Pitt, students can choose majors from women’s studies to chemistry. To study the humanities, we study women, because they are 51 percent of humanity. But how can we study women without studying that which comprises 70 percent of women: water? And how can our chemists truly comprehend an aqueous solution, without a soulful appreciation of the water that makes it all possible?

We must reform the undergraduate curriculum around a single major: water studies.

As research for this column, I accidentally stumbled through a window into a women’s studies class. I was there for more than 40 seconds, but I didn’t hear water mentioned once. According to my math, 28 of those seconds should have concerned water. I didn’t even hear women mentioned, actually. All the professor did was pass back papers and write the homework on the board and yell at me – I guess because I’m a man. I wasn’t about to awkwardly hover halfway through the window, acting like I broke it on purpose, for another 49 minutes and 20 seconds of that crap! So I stormed out of the window and then wrote this very column.

I once took a chemistry lab. On day one, I was delighted to find my lab’s first ingredient was 500 mL of water. Up to this point, everything was going well. Unfortunately, my TA pushed things too far, too fast and demanded we contaminate the water with a host of other chemicals. It was clear that the other students and I, still enchanted by the water’s latent potential, weren’t prepared to move on. Even clearer, my TA feared the water – she insisted that we use only “distilled water,” which is emasculated, stripped of its potency. In protest, I drank everything in sight and then woke up bleeding in that very women’s studies class.

Now, consider Africana studies. The climax of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a flood. Plus, one of the Civil Rights movement’s victories was desegregating water fountains. And as for Langston Hughes, according to my estimates, he was about 2 to 3 percent more water than the average man. You might ask, “Why does that make any difference?” or “Where are you getting that estimate?” These are the types of questions that water studies tries to answer.

Here is a sample course load for the water studies major:

Classes currently offered: PEDC211 Water Aerobics 1, GEOL1051 Groundwater Geology, PEDC147 Water Safety Instructor Training and CEE1412 Hydrology and Water Resources.

Classes that would have to be added: BUS120 Business Water, CLAS100 Sailing the Wine Dark Seas: Water as Protagonist in Homer’s “Odyssey,” ENGR350 Mechanical Engineering Seminar: Water as Antagonist in Honda’s Odyssey, STAT1153 Independent Research: How Much Water is There? And FILMST1600 Topics in Film: “Waterworld” as Underrated Cinema.

You probably have no idea how ignorant you are of basic facts about water. For example, do you know what “~:-)~” means? It means, “I’m halfway underwater and I enjoy it.” Can you even read underwater? Aquatic illiteracy is widespread. It’s time to put that hubbub about foreign language education on the back burner, because we’ve got a whole generation of kids who can’t even speak English underwater.

Furthermore, unless more voters read my recent column on the gas tax, it looks like ocean levels are going to rise within our lifetimes. An education in water studies will prepare undergrads for the growing role of water in our policy debates and lowlands.

Be warned, though – water studies isn’t a fast-track program to Conformityland, Conformityburgh or even Conformityvania. It won’t give you all the answers in a neat little package to regurgitate to some all-knowing professor and then forget a week later. Instead, water studies gives students the tools they need to make up their own minds about important questions like, “Can I swim in it?” and “Can I drink it?”

Pitt is especially well-suited to spearhead this educational revolution. We’re conveniently situated just three miles from the intersection of the Ohio River, the Allegheny River and the other river. And, we have several working water fountains and faucets in every building, except for that log cabin on the Cathedral lawn.

Let’s seize this opportunity. Demand a water studies major here at Pitt. You’ll help yourself and future generations drink from the fountain of wisdom.

Got water? E-mail Lewis at [email protected].