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<p>Isn’t that what a liberal education is about?</p>
<p>You may not have an interest in something when you are in college but it may be something that you find useful and interesting when you are older. I find that interests broaden as you get older.</p>
<p>No, you should have an interest in the LA by the time you go to college, or wait to go to college.</p>
<p>I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I hate how college is just that thing you do after high school so you can get a job ASAP. What a waste.</p>
<p>The truly curious person is interested in all human endeavors.</p>
<p>Whatever happened to lifelong learning? By your definition, it seems like one should go to college “to learn” and not be consistently learning throughout their life.</p>
<p>Lifelong learning is fine, but no excuse for squandering your time at college.</p>
<p>Who said you needed to go to college to learn?</p>
<p>Nobody. But here’s the kicker: if you do go to college, you should be learning. If you don’t go to college, fine. But let’s not have colleges cater to people who don’t want to learn in them.</p>
<p>All I did was bash engineers to a smaller extent than the liberal arts majors were already bashed in this thread.</p>
<p>Clearly, you didn’t like it.</p>
<p>But this kind of arrogance and insulting other people’s choices with what they do with their lives, is tiring. You know what? I never even heard the preposterous things said in this thread by other engineers at my university, because they have greater intelligence and class than the big posters on this thread.</p>
<p>^ I think you might be taking it a little personally, dude. Besides, what I’m hearing from these guys is pretty representative of a lot of tech majors’ views. Where are you that it’s so different?</p>
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<p>You may have an interest in many things but no interest in a particular requirement that is required. Of course, you may develop an interest in this thing later in life. Interest is not required at the beginning.</p>
<p>I’m going to ignore most of the last few pages in the hope that some of the nastiness there will fade away and be forgotten.
I only see two possible lines of thought in your arguments:</p>
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<li><p>An implicit value judgment about those who don’t aspire to a life in academia. I can’t tell you what morals to follow, but IMO field of study is one of the worst ways imaginable to evaluate an individual’s character.</p></li>
<li><p>Assuming that you aren’t making such judgments, I have to conclude that you are simply worried about the potential for academic inquiry among those who are interested if the university also caters to preprofessional interests. I maintain that this viewpoint is empirically denied by the status quo. Quite apart from a variety of good liberal arts colleges, many universities do offer intensive academic or theory-based tracks within many different fields.</p></li>
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<p>So… what exactly is the problem?</p>
<p>No, you should have an interest in what you’re learning. You don’t have to go in already in love with every subject, but you should have a mind open enough and an academic curiosity in man’s endeavors sincere enough to appreciate - no, love - the things you’re being exposed to. Nobody can love something before they know it; if that’s what you’re saying, I concede.</p>
<p>I think that we read through Paradise Lost in second semester English. I think that there were about forty students in that class and that they were there because it was a required course. I do not recall a lot of love before, during or after the course for the material content.</p>
<p>I can appreciate the material better after having lived life.</p>
<p>A lot of stuff can go over your head in some of these courses and different people have different interests and different interests at different times. That’s the nature of life.</p>
<p>Noimagination:</p>
<p>(2) is closer to how I feel by a longshot. However I disagree with the idea that academic inquiry is safe in the US, and that preprodessional interests in actual colleges and universities across the board haven’t already and demonstrably affected academia. My position is that steps need to be taken to reverse the trend… Perhaps not such drastic steps as I have offered as possible solutions, but still. I also disagree with the argument that there is no problem since elite institutions haven’t succumbed yet. First off, they might be soon to follow. Second, the kind of education I am arguing for should be available to a wider range of students, if only for the sake of social mobility.</p>
<p>Then wait to go to college until you are ready, BCEagle. A lot if people read literature for fun in high school. Paradise Lost is one of the most phenomenally interesting works ever written, IMHO.</p>
<p>So… you expect kids to sit around until they’re ready for college? What about those who wish to <em>gasp</em> go to college to learn something while increasing their job prospects?</p>
<p>The world doesn’t operate according to your wishes and preferences. Not everyone wants to read or can appreciate Paradise Lost at age 20, nor should they be forced to.</p>
<p>General education belongs in high school and in specified schools. Not as a forced curriculum in post-secondary education.</p>
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<p>Please don’t tell me what to do. That’s rude.</p>
<p>I went to college a long time ago. Did fine. Did fine with life too.</p>
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<p>Good for them. It didn’t work for me. I’d bet that it won’t work for the majority of high-schoolers.</p>
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<p>Wonderful. Would you make it a requirement to get into college?</p>
<p>You have some strange desires for how to shape the system.</p>
<p>Seriously. You can’t expect to educate everyone on everything, just because it’s “intellectually stimulating.” Life isn’t long enough.</p>
<p>The best solution is to provide students (in high school) a broad overview of the different jobs and educational fields in the world.</p>
<p>No, go live life and see the world while you’re young. It’s already been pointed out it’s cheaper than college. Get some jobs, make some money, whatever.</p>
<p>Clearly the world isn’t like I would have it, or there’d be no argument. That doesn’t make me wrong and it doesn’t mean I can’t tell people what I think.</p>
<p>No, kids shouldn’t be made to go to college and learn LA stuff. So don’t send them to college!</p>
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<p>No way. I used sparknotes all the way.</p>