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March 04, 2007

A sidebar on education

In a letter to the editor of the Spring 2006 issue of The Key Reporter, Robert B. Pomerantz wrote,

"I believe it is a bit naive to expect a student to go directly from high school to college and be able to appreciate the idea of liberal education. One needs a variety of experiences and exposures to develop a certain amount of maturity and awareness beyond academic education"

As a return-to-college student, I complete agree with Mr. Pomerantz. When I was 17 and off to a Jesuit college as an Honors student, I was enrolled in a fine example of a liberal arts curriculum. The program would have, in my first two years, rolled out the history of western thought in history, literature, art, science, etc. in a series of related courses, era by era, over six quarters. I was too young, and far too unaware, to appreciate the value of this educational opportunity. I wasted it - something I still regret. I lost my interest because it seemed boring, these seminar discussions of an ancient world I couldn't understand the value of knowing better. I lost interest because my family wasn't educated (I've since learned that in my current academic community, my family could be described as "working class," though I never thought of us that way and never once thought I wouldn't go to college) in that liberal arts tradition, so it was new to me. And, I suppose, my family's problems at the time had something to do with it (okay, a lot to do with it). But the point is, now I wish I'd had that program. At Columbia University, they have a similar program - still. The geek in me really wishes I could be an undergrad again.

Anyway, the point is, when I face my own students now, I see the same impatience, the same desire to complete the task and get on to the next, and then get on to the job and the good income and all that, and in far too many cases, a complete lack of curiosity, a lack of interest in learning, or thinking about complex topics. I have really begun to think that the general high-school-to-college-track shouldn't be general. Some young people should go directly to college because they have experiences in their lives that have shaped a future. But some young people need some experience, and then they can decide if they need or want a college education when they have a better idea of what they want or need it for. Taking a bunch of classes just to get a diploma misses the greater point of higher education.

The editors in that issue captured that part nicely:

"The point is that, in a world all too prone to treasure only the specialized and the immediately useful, our voice is needed in support of learning whose value may become apparent only over the course of a lifetime."

Sometimes you have to have spent some lifetime to really appreciate the opportunity to have that learning.

Posted by cageyer at March 4, 2007 09:22 AM

Comments

Posted by: senioritis at March 5, 2007 06:33 AM