Jump to content
  • entries
    46
  • comments
    875
  • views
    51,193

Schattenmann's Odyssey


Schattenmann

710 views

<Schattenmann> So, I'm sitting here at 8:35 on Easter Sunday procrastinating an Economics essay that's due by 11:55 PM

<Subtleknifewielder> uh oh...

<Schattenmann> I hate econ so much

<Schattenmann> This is an easy essay

<Schattenmann> I can write this in 30 minutes

<Subtleknifewielder> But it's boring?

<Schattenmann> I wrote a 5-page essay about CN in 2 hours from 1-3 AM once but I can't write this econ essay

Assignment:

The Bureau of Economic Analysis provides profit data for various industries in the United States. Go to www.bea.gov and find National Income and Product Account Table 6.16D on Corporate Profits by Industry. Based on the most-recent figures, which of the following categories of industry classifications has the greatest profits: (a) financial or nonfinancial; (b) manufacturing, transportation, wholesale trade, or retail trade; © durable goods or nondurable goods? Compared to the same quarter a year earlier, which sectors had the largest and smallest percentage increases in profit? Which sectors, if any, experienced losses? What are the implications of the profit changes for expansion or contraction of the particular industries?

8 years ago I began the most nightmarish odyssey that I have ever been exposed to in my life. College. I hate college, I hate it more than anything on Earth. I would rather work as an organ harvester specializing in infants than be in college. I hate college because I like to learn.

Here's the lowdown for anyone out there who has not yet entered college: The first two years are high school over again. English, biology, math, foreign language, study skills. Why did I even attend the last two years of high school? I want to be a teacher. I don't want 3 months off/year, I don't want state benefits, I don't want to be off by 3 every day. I want to teach. So, I went to Longwood, which is where you go to be a teacher in Virginia. I went nuts. I became nocturnal, playing Diablo II and watching Law and Order re-runs from 4PM to 5 AM every day,commuting home evry weekend. Honestly, I could have murdered my super-broseph roommate and hanged myself with his intestines. Clearly, I failed out of Longwood in one semester. Where do flunkies go? Thaaaat's right, community college. I've been in community college for 5 of the last 8 years. At this point I hope less people read blogs than I imagine do, but seriously I think you guys all know Schattenmann well enough to know that I don't give a damn about your snickering over that figure since I am confident that I am more intelligent than most of you regardless.

Back on point.

In 1924, Longwood was the "State Teachers College at Farmville." You went there and they taught you to be a teacher. That was 86 years ago. If you're not familiar with Education now, basically, you major in a subject area (history) and minor in education (elementary, secondary, etc). This means a lot of pissing around, jumping through bureaucratic hoops.

As a history major, here's a sampling of what I have to take: 2 semesters of a foreign language, 1 econ, 2 science, 2 math, an art, 2 english, 1 physical eduation, 1 literature. Look familiar, teeny-boppers? That's right; as I said, it's your high school curriculum.

-Foreign language: I took 3 years of Spanish and 2 years of German. I tested as a fluent speaker in German when I entered Longwood, reprieve due to knowledge already present? No, German culture class instead of grammar. I detest Spanish as vulgar, so of course the community college I'm in doesn't offer German.

-Science: Two BIO courses are suggested. I gene-spliced bacteria in 8th grade. I goddamn took the DNA out of mold and put it into bacteria to produce antibiotic-resistant bacteria! When I was 14! I HAVE BIOLOGY DOWN, GODDAMNIT! I took ecology/oceanography in 4th grade, I took general science in 6th, life science (biology) in 7th, biology in 10th, ecology in 12th. I have proven my scientific abiliies.

-Math: Math has absolutely nothing to do with teaching anything except math. It just !@#$@#$ doesn't.

-Econ: Ok, economics is a social science. Microeconomics and macroeconomics, however, have nothing to do with the study of history. A general knowledge of either will help in interpretation of events, but not to a degree that either needsbe studied by someone going into my field.

-Phys Ed: Yeah, you read that correctly--I have to take weightlifting, ice-!@#$@#$-skating, nutrition, or some other bullsmack class to be a teacher. A history teacher.

-English/Lit: Welcome to English 111 and 112, hopefully you saved all your high school essays because we're writing the same essays all over again, except this time it's gonna cost you $500. I scored in the 99th percentile in writing in every standardized test that ever beleaguered students in my school district. I am write and so can you!

-Art: Yes, art. Here's your art: I had 13 ceramics pieces displayed from 8th-10th grade. Art is my !@#$%*. The art history class I'm taking this semester to satisfy my art credit? It's the same as the Western Culture class I took to fill a humanities credit.

The problem is that colleges and universities are no longer institutions of learning. They are sports franchises and prestige machines. Why create a high quality teacher in 2 years when you can squeeze 4 years' worth of tuition out of him? If knowledge had anything to do with college the knowledge you possess when you get there would matter. Why did I take an extra year of math and Spanish in high school to get an Advanced Diploma when it doens't make any difference? Why shouldn't I give up for 4 years and work in crappy jobs if the !@#$ just keeps flowing? Do I live in a Pink Floyd album?!

What's the answer? I !@#$@#$ dare, no, I beg all of you to go to your counselor/academic advisor/whatever your college calls it and ask why an art student has to take an economics class and I will also bet each of you that here's what you get: "We want well-rounded students."

"Well-rounded" is the job of goddamned elementary and secondary schools. AND HERE IS THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM in that very realization! I'm taking high school English because college is high school, and I'm surrounded by morons because high school doesn't count!

I want to die. I just want to die more than I want to teach anymore.

26 Comments


Recommended Comments



And now, I'm sitting here procrastinating an econ essay at 9:35 on Easter Sunday that's due by 11:55.

I will send 50 tech to the first person to crawl through my window and snap my neck.

Link to comment

And now, I'm sitting here procrastinating an econ essay at 9:35 on Easter Sunday that's due by 11:55.

I will send 50 tech to the first person to crawl through my window and snap my neck.

That would be in violation of the CN Terms of Service.

Oh, also the law.

Link to comment

When I went and registered for classes again in January the counselor told me I was fmiliar and I told her I ought to be, she'd been registering me for 3 years 4 years ago. So she says well it's great you're back, and I said actually I was dreading every minute of the next 3 years because [everything above] and she says, "Well I really hate that you can't enjoy something you're going to be doing for so long again. Unfortunately it's just not set up to handle accomplished people like you." Oh my God! I could have slammed my head against the corner of her desk to prove a point at that moment. At least she was the only person in the last 8 years that didn't say "Well we want well-rounded students."

Link to comment

I hear you and feel your pain. But trust me sticking in there and getting a job you actually want is better than the alternative. I took the alternative two years ago and am now trying my damndest to get back into school.

All of the doubling up classes suck... but the reason they don't just accept high school equivalencies is because those aren't standardized. From what you said your grade school years were much higher quality than mine were up until 10th grade (in 11th grade I dual enrolled at a community college and just knocked out my first two years of college rather than wasting time with upper end high school classes). I know many people with the same high school credits you had, and maybe even the same grades, with probably half the experience you described.

iirc they do have tests to let you skip entry level courses and take more advanced courses to start with... but they don't fulfill credit hour obligations which seems to be your primary issue. You already are aware of overlapping courses (your history of art to fulfill art, etc), so there's nothing really more I can suggest to help you, just recommending again that you hang in there. It does suck that you have to have this knowledge that is useless to you, and it's probably a large part of the reason we have a shortage in teachers. If they made a vocational program for teachers where instead of qualifying as a well rounded teacher you could specialize in one field and get out in 2 years, it would probably solve a lot of problems... but what can you do.

Link to comment

I agree with the two year thing. Here's my fix, as well, Accreditation boards now require profs to do a ton of research. Its not uncommon to see profs only teaching 2-3 classes at a time, from what I hear 25 years ago, they would teach twice as many. Cut the research requirements, and allow profs to teach more = lower tuition.

Also feel your pain Schatt, I'm playing CN and guitar to avoid an HR paper that needs done tonight.

Link to comment
I hate college because I like to learn.

You, sir, win the internet.

Nice rant, it encompasses my feelings about it, too.

"Never let schooling get in the way of your education." ~ Mark Twain

Link to comment

I agree with the two year thing. Here's my fix, as well, Accreditation boards now require profs to do a ton of research. Its not uncommon to see profs only teaching 2-3 classes at a time, from what I hear 25 years ago, they would teach twice as many. Cut the research requirements, and allow profs to teach more = lower tuition.

Also feel your pain Schatt, I'm playing CN and guitar to avoid an HR paper that needs done tonight.

Profs teaching more means less research, much of a college's money comes not from tuition, but from royalties from the professor's research. I'm almost certain those mandates are due to economics, not a whimsical figure pulled out of nowhere, and reducing research time to make professors teach more would result in higher tuition costs to maintain the school's budget.

Either that or we would lose a great deal of progress in many sciences due to research being cut altogether and universities existing soley to teach, rather than to be a place to both teach and learn for student and professor alike.

Link to comment

Though I agree with the sentiment that colleges are becoming manufacturing factory-lines that pump out students of a variety of majors...

I do disagree with the the very fact of your conclusive premise. Primary education is not to make students well-rounded. In elementary school, college isn't even a twinkle in the eye. Sometimes, middle school (junior high) is taken out of the equation and some school systems go from kindergarten to eight grade. The point of pre-high school is to give gradual background on a variety of subjects. The fact is that the amount of information you retain from elementary school is tremendously trimmed down as your get older.

Have you ever watched "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?"? Until recently, I thought it was a sham. I was bent on the fact that I believed fifth graders do no learn 25% of those facts. To my surprise, they do. Many school systems are chasing down an ever increasing standard of producing top-notch students, so they start pumping seemingly useless knowledge into their heads hoping one day they actually use that knowledge for some sort of "meaningful" task.

To look at it on an even smaller scale, after 8 hours of 'listening' to lectures in a given day, the mind only takes down (around) 35% of the information. The fact is that elementary school and middle school are entirely irrelevant. On an informational basis, you'd be better off being home schooled in some cases. I have always seen grades 1-8 as social growth, not informational growth.

And then there is high school. High school requires you to, more or less, take a wide range of topics to broaden one's horizons. Why? College provides ample opportunity for 17 year old students to decide the rest of their lives in a matter of a month. Besides the fact that there is something terribly wrong with that... the fact is that despite taking those classes in high school, they are not on par with college courses. If you take a high school class that compares to a college class (not talking about AP or early college classes), then either your professor is terrible, or your high school teacher was doing more than really was necessary, but this varies by school system.

Once you hit college, why should one be "well-rounded"? Why should someone take inferences from the liberal arts? Your argument turns around when you ask this and begins to contradict itself. That is an argument for putting students on an assembly line. The reason being well-rounded is so important is because they apply to real life, or give a better appreciation or understanding to given applications.

To break down the classes (and how they relate to a history education major), I asked my roommate, who is (ironically) going for education in American History.

Biology: Biology, along with a variety of sciences, is extremely important to the progression of history. Take, for instance, the Pacific Theater during World War 2. Without a general understanding of fungi, specifically penicillin, the war would have turned out very differently. The theory of evolution and cell theory has revolutionized the historical outcomes of natural health and demographics.

Perhaps the courses in college for biology delve into deeper material, but taking it in eighth grade doesn't qualify you to have a good grasp of biology. And if strictly eighth grade material would suffice for a college class, I would strongly question the credentials of that college's credibility.

Math: Which maths? Calculus? Sure, that would be rather useless on some accounts for a history teaching major. It does, though, allow deeper analysis into integration and looking at overall rates. Statistics? That is a fairly major necessity for history.

Econ: Definitely have applications in contemporary and ancient history.

English/Lit: English and literature have impacted history in more ways than not, and to think otherwise is blatant ignorance. And writing essays? Welcome to history, where it's almost entirely all essay-based.

Art: Art has had a major impact on history, in terms of both music and physical art. It also gives a better appreciation of it I could suppose. My roommate says, though, that art credit requirements are there for a GPA booster. :P

Back in the good ol' days, there was something called the Gentlemen's C. People would take a wide range of classes outside of their major to broaden their horizons. That's the point. I believe people should be required to take economics because that is an integral part to our society as a whole; the same goes for civics classes.

As to the explanations for the classes above, those came from my roommate, but I'd tend to agree with him. I have to take classes outside of my major that have no relevance whatsoever. Marine/evolutionary biology with art? With creative writing? And as to a foreign language... yes, learning a foreign language is integral to almost every major. Why? Unless you are secluded on some remote island by yourself, you will have a variety of interactions with non-english speakers in your lifetime.

You grossly over-simplify the problem at hand to suit your prejudgments since your experience sucked. I know a lot of people whose experience sucked. I know even more who can't even afford to go to college and are some of the brightest people I have ever met.

The fact is that not all school systems are at par, and when you are actually looking for a job after college (if anyone can even find one... so for all of you college graduates this year looking for jobs, good luck!), your soon-to-be employers want people who have the credentials to be hired. They also want hands-on experience. The only way they can be guaranteed someone who has taken those general biology classes or those economic classes is by attaining a degree in history education, which requires those classes.

The way you are looking at it is limited to the box you have built around it. You put up a sign saying "No Escape" and think that all colleges are like that, or that all people are in the same unfortunate rut as you. I do not know much about Longwood, so I can't comment on it.

Just my 2 cents on it... wasn't directing any offense to you at all,

Link to comment

If I went to college in a place called Farmville, I'd lose it too.

Aye... which is why I HATE logging on to facebook... I fear that when I boot it up, I will see "Peggy Sue found a poor sheep on her farm!"

Link to comment

Profs teaching more means less research, much of a college's money comes not from tuition, but from royalties from the professor's research. I'm almost certain those mandates are due to economics, not a whimsical figure pulled out of nowhere, and reducing research time to make professors teach more would result in higher tuition costs to maintain the school's budget.

Either that or we would lose a great deal of progress in many sciences due to research being cut altogether and universities existing soley to teach, rather than to be a place to both teach and learn for student and professor alike.

I'd like to see you back that up with experience or a citation. My Father is a VP of a small community college (ITs not as cool as it sounds.) They don't get any royalties. My own University produces income graphs quite often. First is tuition, next is donations from alumni.

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/budgetmyths.pdf

For example in this link on page 4, UC has their budget, the only items that could include research are the lab and contracts sections, that make up a small section in the graph.

Penn St. shows a similar trend.

http://budget.psu.edu/factbook/finance2009/income200910.asp

Link to comment

I'd like to see you back that up with experience or a citation. My Father is a VP of a small community college (ITs not as cool as it sounds.) They don't get any royalties. My own University produces income graphs quite often. First is tuition, next is donations from alumni.

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/budgetmyths.pdf

For example in this link on page 4, UC has their budget, the only items that could include research are the lab and contracts sections, that make up a small section in the graph.

Penn St. shows a similar trend.

http://budget.psu.edu/factbook/finance2009/income200910.asp

And so I am proven wrong. I was operating on the assumption that universities ran like businesses and thus would make business like decisions.

tbh now I believe that the University system is uncapitalistic and deserves to fail. Too bad the government would just bail them out.

Link to comment

And so I am proven wrong. I was operating on the assumption that universities ran like businesses and thus would make business like decisions.

tbh now I believe that the University system is uncapitalistic and deserves to fail. Too bad the government would just bail them out.

Erm, I know that here (University of Rhode Island), most of the professor's income comes from research royalties and grants... last I checked. I think it's variant on college to college?

Link to comment

Erm, I know that here (University of Rhode Island), most of the professor's income comes from research royalties and grants... last I checked. I think it's variant on college to college?

I could understand that, but if that's the case why would it be on the university to require professor's to do the research, if all it is doing is providing a supplemental income stream for the professors?

I could see some professors demanding it, and getting that time available for research as a benefit, since they will directly benefit from it (being able to get work done that they want and get more money for it), but there is no logical reason for a Unviersity to require it if they don't get a cut of the money back.

I can think of two possible explanations:

1) It started out how I initially said (as a perk etc) that came to be expected and thus standardized, and as all such things in a bureaucracy we end up shafted for it.

2) The university is being paid under the table for the research time, so it wouldn't show up on the budgets, but the policy makers are receiving a cut.

1 is probably the more likely of the two.

Link to comment

Having professors who have made innovative and groundbreaking research is an asset to the prestige of the college. In addition, many colleges receive massive federal funding for research

Link to comment

SpacingOutMan,

Well thought out reply but you basically repeated what I said, then applied the opposite conclusion.

I do disagree with the the very fact of your conclusive premise. Primary education is not to make students well-rounded. In elementary school, college isn't even a twinkle in the eye. Sometimes, middle school (junior high) is taken out of the equation and some school systems go from kindergarten to eight grade. The point of pre-high school is to give gradual background on a variety of subjects. The fact is that the amount of information you retain from elementary school is tremendously trimmed down as your get older.

Primary and Secondary schools are designed to produce well-rounded, literate workers/voters. Whether Primary means k-8, K-5, or K-6 and Secondary means 6-8/9-12, 6-12, 6-7/8-12 makes no difference.

You go on to state that high-schoolers take courses in a wide variety of subjects because they may pick a major (therefore field of labor) inside a month once they get to college [so we want them to have a broad experience before making that decision], but then say that college is the place to make well-rounded people. The two conflict. A high-school graduate has taken courses in a wide variety of subjects and is therefore well-rounded, only high-school graduates attend college, so a college student who takes the same courses he took in high school to be well-rounded is not made any more well-rounded. That's the problem.

You go on to argue that it's important for professionals (the production of which used to be the business of colleges) to be well-rounded, and that's why they should take courses outside their majors; for example, an art student taking econ because maybe one day that person will want to open a studio and then they'll need to understand economics); or a teacher taking economics because one day he might open a charter school and need to know how to run it. Again, as graduates of college we know these people are also graduates of high school and are therefore already well-rounded. The idea that a person should be required to take a large portion of courses which maybe someday there is a slight chance he will need or want to know is also absurd; if a person decides to switch fields, logic dictates that he go and be educated in that field, not that he be given a cursory survey of it in college, because--as you pointed out--the retention rate is low to begin with and then you add in the years between a possible field switch. The idea that I should be forced to learn a foreign language because one day I might run across someone who doesn't speak English is laughable; in that scenario, a non-English-speaker in America has not met his obligations, and an English-speaker in France who can't speak French has not met his obligations. Whether I might one day go to Spain and need to order lunch hasn't got anything to do with producing professionals. My school offers an Undertaker Certificate--would you argue that undertakers need to be "well-rounded" and take German because maybe one day they'll need to bury a tourist or maybe one day they'll visit Germany? No, that's stupid.

You say "I believe people should be required to take economics because that is an integral part to our society as a whole; the same goes for civics classes." Again, welcome to Primary and Secondary schools. Once upon a time, kids actually took "Civics" and yes, it's important for citizens to have a basic understanding, but as I said and as reality exists, the education system is set up for that to be handled in the school everyone goes to (primary and secondary) not the school few people go to (college). The relocation of civics and economics to post-secondary school flies in the very face of the education system by concentrating that knowledge in a minority of people, whereas they are democratizing factors that are meant to be taught to the majority.

No. It's simple business. If all the History majors have to take Spanish they subsidize the Spanish dept; and if all the Art majors have to take Economics they subsidize the Business dept; and if all the Business majors have to take Politics they subsidize the History dept.

As far as your breakdown of the sampling of requirements, it's mostly hyperextensions of your stance. As I said, yes, economics shapes history, but I can teach and understand that without taking a course in microeconomics where I'm learning how to calculate profit not how economies effect people. I covered English: we all take English from day 1 of Kindergarten; a person that can't write an essay by the time they've been in school for 13 years needs more than an ENG 101 course, they need a lobotomy. Art history for a history student is fluff--the major movements of art are covered in history classes--this isn't academic, we've all been through school so you know that when you were in 10th grade and studied Western Civ you talked about the Renaissance. The idea that a history student should look favorably on any class as a "GPA booster" is idiotic; if my GPA is fine, I don't need it at all, if it's bad, then I can take it if I want/need to.

The Gentleman's C thing is exactly in line with what I'm saying. To quote you "People would take a wide range of classes outside of their major to broaden their horizons" because they wanted to. There are 50-yr-olds in some of my classes, they're there because they're interested, and that's hugely different than certification in one field being withheld because you didn't study an unrelated field.

Link to comment
Here's the lowdown for anyone out there who has not yet entered college: The first two years are high school over again. English, biology, math, foreign language, study skills.

I really wish that was the case here. The only thing even close to that is foreign language (I had basically taken the first half a class already) and English (And after a while, most English classes are pretty much the same stuff, new books).

Link to comment

I can't think of a single college course that was comparable to a high school course.

Regarding requirements, yes sometimes it doesn't make sense that you would need to know a foreign language to know how to teach history, and I can't understand at all why there wouldn't be some allowable form of placement test if you do know a foreign language. That said, I am a strong proponent of forcing students to take a class from many different subject areas.

So your requirements again... 2 semesters of a foreign language, 1 econ, 2 science, 2 math, an art, 2 english, 1 physical eduation, 1 literature....

Yes, this looks like high school again, but in college, you can get much better, much more interesting classes.

Alright, so foreign language, you are proficient, and now you have to take a Spanish or German culture class. Take something historical. Learn about the history of mesoamerica or something. This can be fun, and related to what you enjoy.

Econ: great for someone who likes history. Your assignment looks more historical, though probably not the kind of history you would like to be doing. I'd prefer something more numbersy myself, where I'm solving problems.

Science: What's not to like about science! ahhhhghhghghgh. (I may be biased). You can take stuff related to bio if you want. If you aren't too interested or planning to use it in the future, maybe something like nutrition just for your own knowledge and fun? Or some kind of neurobio to understand how all that stuff up in our heads is working? Human behavioral biology was my favorite class in college; you can understand what makes people tick. Genetics, and figure out how to create your own pig-cow-giraffe monster. Or why not Physics or chemistry? Those are fun, and you can figure out how the world works. Molecular bio and you can figure out how life works. If this is a requirement for the history major, you don't have to take any kind of difficult science class. You can take one that's almost just pure fun. Introduction to black holes, designed for non-science majors. A class on human origins. A seminar on human physiology. Hell, quantum mechanics for non-majors... Science is so fun. Just pick a fun class.

Math: Math is used for everything, and even if you don't plan to use it, if you have it, you'll find yourself taking advantage of that knowledge and just doing fun stuff for yourself. Or you can use it to have a stronger background for higher level, and thus more interesting, economics classes.

Art: Can you take an art history class? I loved having regular lunch presentations for the art history of Greece, Rome, Egypt... It was basically just a history class, with the art doing the narrating.

English and Literature: This could be very useful for a history teacher. The students will have to write essays and the like anyway, so it'd be good for you to be strong in these subjects. And again, this is college, not high school. Pick something really fun for you.

P.E.: LOL. Well, make the best of it. Take a class on fencing, rock climbing, golf, soccer, tennis, basketball, bowling, hula-hooping, I'm sure there's something fun there. Just make the best of it.

Link to comment

There was a time when primary education was a guarantee of literacy. Then it was high school education. Now it is a college/university diploma/degree. It is thus a necessary evil in a world grown increasingly stupid.

Economics is horrible, though. You have my sympathy.

Link to comment

Primary and Secondary schools are designed to produce well-rounded, literate workers/voters. Whether Primary means k-8, K-5, or K-6 and Secondary means 6-8/9-12, 6-12, 6-7/8-12 makes no difference.

You go on to state that high-schoolers take courses in a wide variety of subjects because they may pick a major (therefore field of labor) inside a month once they get to college [so we want them to have a broad experience before making that decision], but then say that college is the place to make well-rounded people. The two conflict. A high-school graduate has taken courses in a wide variety of subjects and is therefore well-rounded, only high-school graduates attend college, so a college student who takes the same courses he took in high school to be well-rounded is not made any more well-rounded. That's the problem.

The ability for high school classes, in most school systems, to adequately educate students and make them actually (feasibly) well-rounded is rather limited. The fault lies in budget funding and curriculum requirements. I took microeconomics last semester and I absolutely hated it, to be perfectly honest. I also took a similar class in high school titled "Microeconomics"... go figure. I learned a lot more in the college class than in high school. To be fair, I don't remember a solid quarter of what I learned last semester since it was ridiculously difficult since the teacher had a terrible accent to understand, but I know a helluva lot more than I learned in an entire year taking high school Microeconomics.

As I said before, it is solely based on one's interactions and their given primary and secondary school system. Look at the blatant differences between the Christian south and the liberal northeast. Pennsylvania was up in arms about Intelligent Design being included in its curriculum whereas in Texas it's okay to have implications of Creationism in textbooks. The point I was making is that employers want people who are, indeed, well-rounded and they aren't guaranteed that from every individual's experiences in grade school. It's simply impossible. So they are given a guarantee that when they go to a college that requires some sort of liberal arts and hire potential employees, they know they've taken those 'well-rounded' classes. How much does that account for in the decision process to hire them? It depends on who you ask and what position you are going for.

You go on to argue that it's important for professionals (the production of which used to be the business of colleges) to be well-rounded, and that's why they should take courses outside their majors; for example, an art student taking econ because maybe one day that person will want to open a studio and then they'll need to understand economics); or a teacher taking economics because one day he might open a charter school and need to know how to run it. Again, as graduates of college we know these people are also graduates of high school and are therefore already well-rounded. The idea that a person should be required to take a large portion of courses which maybe someday there is a slight chance he will need or want to know is also absurd; if a person decides to switch fields, logic dictates that he go and be educated in that field, not that he be given a cursory survey of it in college, because--as you pointed out--the retention rate is low to begin with and then you add in the years between a possible field switch. The idea that I should be forced to learn a foreign language because one day I might run across someone who doesn't speak English is laughable; in that scenario, a non-English-speaker in America has not met his obligations, and an English-speaker in France who can't speak French has not met his obligations. Whether I might one day go to Spain and need to order lunch hasn't got anything to do with producing professionals. My school offers an Undertaker Certificate--would you argue that undertakers need to be "well-rounded" and take German because maybe one day they'll need to bury a tourist or maybe one day they'll visit Germany? No, that's stupid.

Or, quite possibly (just possibly), you end up with a teaching job in an urban environment where the dominant culture is, indeed, non-European and Spanish, for instance, is a dominant language amongst most families. Do I really want to take more Spanish after taking it in high school? God no. However, again, it's largely a requirement because as this country becomes more and more diverse, first-language English speakers are becoming diluted with other first-languages, such as Spanish and Chinese. Perhaps you see it as convoluted and useless, but there is some method to the madness. Perhaps for your major, it isn't as integral as others, but in education, I've always seen foreign language as being a necessity for potential language barrier, unless you know exactly where you are going to teach.

You say "I believe people should be required to take economics because that is an integral part to our society as a whole; the same goes for civics classes." Again, welcome to Primary and Secondary schools. Once upon a time, kids actually took "Civics" and yes, it's important for citizens to have a basic understanding, but as I said and as reality exists, the education system is set up for that to be handled in the school everyone goes to (primary and secondary) not the school few people go to (college). The relocation of civics and economics to post-secondary school flies in the very face of the education system by concentrating that knowledge in a minority of people, whereas they are democratizing factors that are meant to be taught to the majority.

And do all high schools offer civics classes? Do all high schools require economics? It is far too much to micromanage every applicant's high school transcript to see what classes they took over a 4 year stretch when they have to do the same thing for thousands of other applicants. And the manpower required would cost the school more money, so in that regard yes, they are padding their pockets by not irrigating through our applications. I'd be damned if they even read the entry essays required for most state schools in a critical manner. The reason that it's required in college is because the variation in primary and secondary school systems is large depending on where you look. They aren't standardized to any nationalized system in which all education experts agree. Upon entry into a post-secondary institution, you have a more standardized curriculum (at least for a state school). For private schools, I can't comment since I only went to Brown for a semester, but I would hazard to guess that they try to standardize their education as well.

No. It's simple business. If all the History majors have to take Spanish they subsidize the Spanish dept; and if all the Art majors have to take Economics they subsidize the Business dept; and if all the Business majors have to take Politics they subsidize the History dept.

It is. Just like how taxes cover our education in grade school, we pay some taxes towards the colleges, and then pay extorting tuition costs. I am naturally appalled at how much colleges demand students to pay, and without my current scholarships, I would, indeed, be attending a more affordable community college. To note on community college: my uncle is the former CEO and President of the Hospital for Special Surgery and he attended community college for two years and transferred into Marist. Just dismembering any disillusion that I was frowning upon community college (I take CC classes over the summer while I'm home as well).

As far as your breakdown of the sampling of requirements, it's mostly hyperextensions of your stance. As I said, yes, economics shapes history, but I can teach and understand that without taking a course in microeconomics where I'm learning how to calculate profit not how economies effect people. I covered English: we all take English from day 1 of Kindergarten; a person that can't write an essay by the time they've been in school for 13 years needs more than an ENG 101 course, they need a lobotomy. Art history for a history student is fluff--the major movements of art are covered in history classes--this isn't academic, we've all been through school so you know that when you were in 10th grade and studied Western Civ you talked about the Renaissance. The idea that a history student should look favorably on any class as a "GPA booster" is idiotic; if my GPA is fine, I don't need it at all, if it's bad, then I can take it if I want/need to.

I do agree that some classes intended to "broaden your horizons" are, indeed, more in-depth than necessary. But to then offer an additional class would mean the school would either have to offer another class, causing a professor to lose out on research time or other extracurricular associations with the school, or hire a new professor altogether to cover 'overview classes', or 'introduction to <insert subject here>' classes. In this regard, it is solely dependent on the size of the school and how many students have to take this overview class. I know that as a student of a research grant school, professors lose a lot of time on their research because of classes, meaning they are less efficient and waste money because they have to juggle an additional workload.

And why someone would need art? I really can't say. I personally enjoy music, and that will take my art credit next semester, but it has to do something with involving people in the cultural arts of America... or something. I honestly, again, can't say why art would be necessary for a non-art major. I'm not really complaining, though, because it will buff my grade for the impending doom that is Organic Chemistry II.

And as to your comment on people being unable to write; you severely overestimated the reading and writing capacity of most Americans. I would strongly argue that there is more than a handful of college students who can't write even if their lives depended on it. This isn't their fault, but rather due to terrible or corrupt school systems that do not follow any formidable, or notable, curricular guideline as to what to teach. Again, it all goes back to pre-post-secondary interactions and school systems.

The Gentleman's C thing is exactly in line with what I'm saying. To quote you "People would take a wide range of classes outside of their major to broaden their horizons" because they wanted to. There are 50-yr-olds in some of my classes, they're there because they're interested, and that's hugely different than certification in one field being withheld because you didn't study an unrelated field.

I suppose, then, I misinterpreted it. I do agree that it is abhorrent that we should be subjected to non-major classes when we could, literally, remove unrelated classes and replace them with a whole additional semester (or even two!) of relevant classes. The only argument I can see for liberal arts is if one gets a liberal arts major. But, obviously, you and I are not pursuing that path, so why should we be subjected to irrelevant classes? Again, I find it largely to be due to a lack of standardized education and unequal informational knowledge amongst students. I also find it to be, though, a possible cushion for people who decide to either change majors, or their careers entirely and have to go back to school. So, in a sense, it's a bit of insurance.

Again, though, I don't know anything of that college that you were attending, or where you are attending now. I only know of the colleges I have had personal experience with. They offer overview classes that present broad subjects instead of diving into complicated material. I took that microeconomics class last semester because although it was tough, it was more academically stimulating than sitting in a classroom learning about supply and demand curves ad nauseum for the entirety of a semester. By also taking these added liberal arts classes (at least here at my school), it is almost impossible to not graduated with a given minor. You just need to take an additional 3 credit class to get the minor for most subjects (totaling at 18 credits for a substantial minor with most departments).

Link to comment

Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...