Friday, March 12, 2010

HW 44- Big Expectations For School

Everyone has big expectations of school myself included. School is supposed to be a learning environment where you learn things form American History to calculus. However, a lot of the time I am not learning to better myself, but rather to just push through. A lot of the time I feel like I go to school, do the work, and make sure I understand the material because that is what I'm supposed to do. That's what I'm supposed to do if I want to go to a good college, and get a decent paying job. In other words I do this so i can achieve the basic American idea of success.

I feel like education in America is set up for me to ignore this feeling, but still keeps me going with this plan that the norm is supposed to follow. I get this from the liberal arts Op-Ed piece as well. Last year as I was getting my college list together, I was trying to decide if a big university of a small liberal arts school was the best for me. I kept hearing that liberal arts colleges would provide me with a 'well rounded education' that I would need as an adult. This article seems to focus how the liberal arts education route will help the student in their career. Besides enhancing critical thinking and communication skills, basic learning skills are needed in the work force. On one hand I feel like liberal arts is a great way to develop thinking skills and make the smarter. However I feel like they are a part of the setup as well. Yeah, they are trying to create better development, but it seems like this only so we can get a good job. I'm not sure whether I think liberal arts schools are good or bad. I think that it's just another way to make us think that it's a better institution than what was previously offered, basically it's preparing us for the same thing, but in a different way.

As I was reading the Op-Ed article on liberal arts colleges, they mention how their schools prepares students to be better employees. The opinion piece about separate schools for employees and entrepreneurs by Robert Kiyosaki (author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad"). I never considered that school is preparing us to be good employees instead of good business leaders/owners. By giving this option, I think that everyone is going to feel like they are too good for being an employee. I feel like everyone is going to aim to become an entrepreneur, who will be willing to work as an employee anymore? I do agree that American education needs an 'injection on innovation' to make it a better system, but I don't think that this is the innovation it needs.

No comments:

Post a Comment