Incubation Of Education

3 Pages 665 Words

Jeffrey Hart said it best when he said that students should take “ordinary” courses. It has been my experience in both high school and in the beginnings of my college career that students take superfluous courses and classes with useless knowledge. I acknowledge the need for people to have well rounded educations but at what cost? In the assigned readings in “The Presence of Others” the pages that I found to be closest to me personal beliefs on education were of Jeffrey Harts (pgs 126-131). The readings said that the majority of college freshman are by nature uneducated in the basics of history and philosophy. Professor Hart quizzed them orally on very basic histories; James Madison, Magna Carta, and the Spanish Armada. Complete silence filled the room as the students realized their blatant naïveté. I find this to be true (saying for a moment that I am “educated”) in many of my past and current classes.
In high school one of my favorite classes was a simple Area Studies class where we discussed and debated European history and culture. The topics brought up in class baffled most. “What’s a halberd Mr. Sato?” Questions such as these threw the class into lengthy explanations into the military aspects of the middle-ages. Learning thrives when students get involved, when they actively participate in lecture and debates. In classes I never want silence when a teacher calls for opinion. I will bring up a point even if it is not what I believe, so playing devil’s advocate I bring the class further into true knowledge.
People learn different ways; either with hands-on activities or by listening to a lecture, personally I want both. In most of my classes this year they of course are low level courses taught by a bored teacher teaching toward two hundred people. Lectures taught by power point presentations, a micro-phoned voice blaring over internal thoughts. This scenario is in no way shape or form my id...