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Why general education courses are not needed
Why general education courses are not needed
Importance of general education
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“Why are general education courses required?” “What do I get from them?” “They have no direct relation to what I would like to do, and what I want to study”. This is what you get when you ask college students about general education courses; they think that they are wasting their time, and money on something that will never help them as they go on with their career. What most students don’t know is that general education courses can help them be successful students in college. As a result of that students don’t take them seriously. There are more ways than one that I can think of, how general education can help you; it will help you be a better person, expose you to different kinds of subjects, and help you be a more well-rounded student.
General education will enhance your knowledge and improve your understanding of the world and its people. A thorough knowledge of a wide range of events, philosophies, procedures, and possibilities makes the phenomena of life appear coherent and understandable. (Harris) General education may help you become aware of and understand your weakness, allowing you to become a better human being.
General education courses often enable students to get as far as their own experiences and imagine worlds far distant in time and space. By opening your senses a good general education can strengthen in you the goodness of acceptance, sympathy, and respect for others. General education will supply you to participate effectively in your community. It can also help you to engage in a conversation with your friends and relatives about different kinds of topic.
The other way general education courses are very helpful. Is if, for example, you excelled at science in high schoo...
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...thods of learning—analogy (Harris). So before you start complaining about how general education courses are west of time and money, review the points summarized above. General education courses are not required because colleges want you to spend more time and more money than you should, it’s required because they don’t want to graduate students who don’t have the proper knowledge to work, and they want to be a better person, and an excellent citizen.
Works Cited
1, Mary Sue Coleman and John L. Hennessy, “Lessons from the humanities and social sciences”. www.washingtonpost.com. November 14, web. 17 Jan 2014
2, Robert Harris, “on the purpose of a liberal arts education”. www.virtualsalt.com , October 15, 2010, web, 17 Jan 2014
3, max nisen, “11 Reasons to Ignore the Haters and Major in the Humanities”. www.businessinsider.com, June 27, 2013, web 17 Jan 2014
In conclusion, Mark Shiffman wrongly holds fear responsible for the decrease in students studying the humanities. Students today pursue more practical fields of study because the interests of human beings are ever-changing, prioritizing one’s passions is more difficult than determining their objective strengths, and one should focus on their various callings in society rather than striving solely
In the article “The New Liberal Arts,” Sanford J. Ungar presents the argument of why liberal arts schools are still competitive and useful today. The beginning of the article immediately addresses the problem that Ungar is defending, “Hard economic times inevitably bring scrutiny of all accepted ideals and institutions, and this time around liberal-arts education has been especially hit hard.” The author provides credibility through his time of being a liberal arts presidents, applies statistics about the enrollment and job security outside of liberal college, he addresses the cost factor and how a student may find compensation, and that a liberal arts college is not preparing students for success. The article “The New Liberal Arts,” addresses
Hutcheson, P. (2011). Goals for United States higher education: from democracy to globalisation. History Of Education, 40(1), 45-57.
In his essay, “The New Liberal Arts,” Sanford J. Ungar advocates that the liberal arts should be everybody’s
...re & values, volume II: A survey of the humanities. (7th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
Ungar, S. J. (2010). The new liberal arts. In G. Graff, C. Birkenstein, & R. Durst (Eds.). “They say, I say”: The moves that matter in academic writing with readings. (2nd ed.). (pp. 190-197). New York: W. W. Norton. This article looks to prove that liberal arts education is just as valuable as “career education” because contrary to general belief, career education doesn’t guarantee high-paying jobs after they graduate.
...es upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.” (www.purposeofeducation.com).
Secondly, college is where a person goes to discover him/herself. This is one of the many goals of the college system, and that discovery process is hindered by unneeded, mandatory classes. Students should be able to try many different classes to discover what interests them the most, not to be fed knowledge that they very well might know already (and is perhaps of no interest to them). If required courses were eliminated, it would free up much time that students could then use to pursue their own interests. College exists to help people become unique individuals, not to put every person into the same standard mold.
General education classes are focused on expanding the intellectual horizon of students. Many of the classes for general education don’t have anything to do with specific career choices but are required regardless. While this seems to be nice and good on the surface, it has problems. If colleges only cared about letting students expand their horizons instead of helping people graduate in a timely manner, there would be many more “college surfers”. Those people go to college aimlessly in order to pass the time. They do not have a definite goal and are not able to get a degree in order to graduate and contribute as a member of society. This would mean that taxpayers are wasting millions of dollars for nothing. Although it is important to keep learning as you grow older, there also needs to be a bigger purpose to life than just class cruising. Also, as stated before, if college was for everyone to learn and grow and there wasn’t a focus on grades then the college degree would have no
Pursuing a higher education is a way of bettering yourself for the world. By bettering yourself, you can impact and change the lives of others, helping with education and being involved in the quality in which others learn to live. Higher education can help to create a work environment that will impact you and your family. Better education also means better wages to extend the value of your education by increasing your yearly income.
Making basic education available provides the conditions for a well-informed population so that we can maintain a society comprised of individuals who have the basic skills required to join the labor force. In particular, an education that provides skills to serve the labor market is vital for individuals, the economy and our society. The reason we continue to subsidize higher education is to produce benefits beyond those that arise from the student through training and
My first reason why general education classes should not be required in college is because the topics that they are learning have already been taught in high school. In an article by Jessica Williams, she summarizes it by saying, “We spend 13 years in ‘general education’ courses. Why are we wasting time rehashing what we already know we aren’t interested in when we could be spending that time adding to our resumes” (Williams). For a majority of students, if they take a class where they have already learned the material or even have a grasp on the subject, most likely, they will become bored and uninterested in their sch...
The transition from high school to college is supposed to be freeing and exciting for students, yet general education requirements make it the opposite. Jaime Wandschneider, writer for Iowa State Daily, says, “From the start of our first semester, general education classes fill the credit count towards our graduation. These courses are supposed to turn young, fresh college students into well-rounded adults”. General education classes do exactly what he says: they fill: they are fillers: somewhat educational and very pointless. Many of the first and second year courses feel like a repeat from high school. As a freshman, I am taking algebra, and I can attest completely that this class is absolutely pointless to me. Does it makes sense that a freshman in college would be taking the same math as a freshman in high school? No, absolutely not, but that is the case for me, and unfor...
Education will help you grow as an individual because the more knowledge you have the better understanding you will have in any given problem that will come your way. It will give you self satisfaction and will boost your self confidence. As an individual I know it will help me in a lot of aspects in my life. It will give me a financial stability because I will be able to land a good job and a high paying salary. I will learn how to spend my money and will learn how to invest it wisely. The more education I have the more respect and acknowledgement I will get from people. Knowledge is really important that is why we need to take it seriously. It is the strong weapon you can have to conquer this complex world. If you have a good education nobody can fool you and you will not tolerate any mistreatment from people. It will give you a better views in life if you are well educated.
General enlightenment also states that education is not a tool to empower people financially but it is the knowledge they acquire to change the way they think by deepening their understanding. The two are also distinct because general enlightenment according to Hamm (1989) schools should not be educational institutions because people can acquire the any form of knowledge they seek. “If an educated person can be that one who has mastered a wide range of different types of knowledge, this characterization points beyond superficial acquaintance with things” ((Divala and Mathebula., 2013: p. 253). And the Institutional use limits a person to only a certain amount of information and sticks to a certain field until the highest stage which in simple terms mean if he wants another field he has to start from the