Roger Hamlett Jr.
ENG 110
Pr. Amy
5 September 2017
Entry Prompt
School and learning should be an adventure, a way to increase curiosity, but nowadays everything done is for a grade. In an excerpt from Ronald Barnetts The Idea of Higher Education he talks about how “A genuine higher education is unsettling; it is not meant to be a cozy experience.” The modern education system no longer asks kids to think about how to impact the world and how to allow their curiosity to lead them down great roads. Nowadays the schooling system teaches kids that in order to be successful you have to cater to “the man” If you don’t do this you will not get a good grade and in turn will be frowned upon in society as being a bad kid. Learning in life should not be about grades. It should be an enlightening experience in which your horizons are broadened and you are left on the edge of your seat begging for more adventure and more opportunity to learn and improve. It should not be about handing in a paper hoping to get an A.
In my experience of education, all you have to do to do well is please the teacher. I have had countless last minute thrown together projects that were absolutely dreadful, yet gotten an A on them. You have to throw together what other people have done, and it is the same old recycled crap that every teacher is used to, so they don’t even blink an eye. I believe doing something for a grade is pointless, because you are not doing it to learn, you are doing it to advance in whatever you are doing. You are not interested in learning, you are interested in looking good.
Martha Nussbaum in Education for Profit, Education for Democracy says “Unlike virtually every nation in the world, we have a liberal arts model of university education.” To me, this is one of the biggest problems with education. I could understand how it would work for some people, but the fact of the matter is you can not force someone to enjoy learning about a subject. For example, I am here to major in history, and I want to become a history teacher, and I have to take an environmental issues course, which has absolutely nothing to do with my major. It does not help me advance to my goals in anyway. Now I am not saying that environmental issues are not important, I am just saying it is waste of time to have me pay for a class that will not help in my career path. I am going to fake it until I make it in that class, which does nothing but waste time, for me and my professor.
School is not just to help kids learn, it is to condition them for the real world, well I will tell you right now it is a dog eat dog world out there, and you are not going to get anywhere without stepping over someone to do it, we don’t value teamwork, it is all about who can step over the little guys. Problem solving can be a minimal skill and as long as you are aggressive and only care about yourself you will do fine in this world, but that is not a world in which I enjoy living in.
I do not believe that the best way to utilize an education is through a liberal arts program, but a specialized curriculum for different majors and be able to allow the student to want to research more into their field and actually be able to make a solid contribution instead of throwing everyone into the same cookie cutter mold that society expects us to fit. Just because someone else did it certainly does not mean I or others should have to follow the same route.
