Now that my daughter is older and finishing high school I'm
hearing plenty of "advice " from people about her future course of study
and eventual work career. Much of it is puzzling because many of the
advisers seem to think that college is a preparation for a life work. I
hope it hasn't become that. Instead, college should be a place where a
learner can build a knowledge base and learn a process for reasoning in
order to more easily find meaning in life.
Trade schools and on the job apprenticing sites should be the agencies that provide the skill training that is a preparation for life work. College should be about fine tuning of reasoning and about teaching how to think. Attending a college or university should not engender comments that we often hear, as in, "Your college major won't enable you to make a lot of money". College should be an end itself, not a means to something else (as in money). Learning a trade or occupation for work is a means to an end- the economic one. Outside of graduate school, which has little resemblance to the under grad four year bachelor's degree course of study, colleges should divorce themselves from that as much as possible.
The world needs more people who can think about philosophy, science , art, history, world cultures and other things the money seekers don't recognize as being as important as their lust for economic prosperity. Our world is filled too much with reality TV, cell phones, garish materialism and endless other trivialities that have pushed more intellectual pursuits and a higher level common knowledge further from the mainstream. If colleges would return to a basic liberal arts curriculum view, it might help change that perspective and make our lives a little more thoughtful and idea enriched.
Our world has too many tweets and too few reasoned discussions, too many bloggers and too few poets, too much division and too little community. I want my daughter to appreciate the few more than the many. College used to be the path for that. Now, if being honest with prospective students, the mission statements of most schools would better say their mission was "to increase our prestige, attract endowments and funding, enroll only the most advanced students while hiring the most renowned faculty, and to attract as many alumni to donate even more money that will make our school even more a diploma factory that will perpetuate our existence".
As I remember, the goal of universities used to be to "produce fully developed human beings". Today they are more narrow paths to economic means.
Trade schools and on the job apprenticing sites should be the agencies that provide the skill training that is a preparation for life work. College should be about fine tuning of reasoning and about teaching how to think. Attending a college or university should not engender comments that we often hear, as in, "Your college major won't enable you to make a lot of money". College should be an end itself, not a means to something else (as in money). Learning a trade or occupation for work is a means to an end- the economic one. Outside of graduate school, which has little resemblance to the under grad four year bachelor's degree course of study, colleges should divorce themselves from that as much as possible.
The world needs more people who can think about philosophy, science , art, history, world cultures and other things the money seekers don't recognize as being as important as their lust for economic prosperity. Our world is filled too much with reality TV, cell phones, garish materialism and endless other trivialities that have pushed more intellectual pursuits and a higher level common knowledge further from the mainstream. If colleges would return to a basic liberal arts curriculum view, it might help change that perspective and make our lives a little more thoughtful and idea enriched.
Our world has too many tweets and too few reasoned discussions, too many bloggers and too few poets, too much division and too little community. I want my daughter to appreciate the few more than the many. College used to be the path for that. Now, if being honest with prospective students, the mission statements of most schools would better say their mission was "to increase our prestige, attract endowments and funding, enroll only the most advanced students while hiring the most renowned faculty, and to attract as many alumni to donate even more money that will make our school even more a diploma factory that will perpetuate our existence".
As I remember, the goal of universities used to be to "produce fully developed human beings". Today they are more narrow paths to economic means.
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