<p>^ I ** COMPLETELY ** agree. That's right on advantagious.</p>
<p>hoedown, it seems that at a school with requirements, people will start taking classes specific to their major in their junior year. At a school with an open curriculum, I get to start from my first year. There's a difference in the depth between the schools, I think.</p>
<p>As I've said before, advantagious, I'm not looking for a well-rounded education. I'm looking for an education specific to what I'm interested in. </p>
<p>And really, maybe I'm not making myself understood - but I don't want to concentrate in only one thing. I'm a curious person. I love learning. If a class comes up that's interesting, I'll jump on it. I just don't want to have to be forced to take classes that don't interest me - and I'm positive that there are no math classes that will ever interest me. I don't want to suffer in college, as I would in a core curriculum or even a school with distribution requirements - school is stressful enough without all that.</p>
<p>We just disagree then, which is fine. To me, a liberal arts education is well-rounded by definition; obviously this is not the case to you. You are hardly alone in the population of college students in general--most students do focus on their area of interest and do not stray far from it. Your focus is a bit different than most of these students, I'll grant--most of them are in some sort of pre-professional type program--but it is similar in that they aren't interested in taking a wide variety of courses. Believe me, I know plenty of kids who are looking forward to never taking another science, or math, or english, or whatever course again. I'm just not one of them.</p>
<p>
[quote]
it seems that at a school with requirements, people will start taking classes specific to their major in their junior year. At a school with an open curriculum, I get to start from my first year.
[/quote]
That is sooo not true.
It is true that in colleges with requirements, students typically try to get their requirements out of the way early, but students who have have their heart set on a major (many enter college undecided) usually make sure to take at least one class that counts towards the major every semester. And usually the classes for one's major fulfill one or more requirements too.</p>
<p>You never know what you might have use for later on in life. My English teacher (who went to University of Chicago) the other day was trying to figure out why his credit card bill came out so high when he hadn't charged all that much on it. He majored in english but was required to take certain economics and math classes and from his economics class, he remembered that if you make a late payment one month on one credit card, then due to universal default, all of your interests rates on all of your cards and any loans or mortages you may have will increase because you are now considered to be a high risk customer. Had he only taken English classes in college, he would have never known this and would have had to callup the credit card companies who really don't want you to know information like that anyway (it's on the teeny tiny print on the long contract they send you to sign; the teacher actually went back just to check what the specific rate was). That to me is not an extreme example; credit card bills are an every day life occurrence. And in my opinion, less people would file for bankruptcy every year and less people would be in debt if everyone were forced to take an economics class in college.</p>
<p>I have loved reading this thread. I am a mom who hardly ever posts but reads the threads exhaustively, lmainly laughing at many of them (especially when folks get so upset over politics/religion in the Parents Cafe). This thread caught my attention mainly because my S has almost completely decided upon SLC, as a Creative Writing major, and mostly because of the open curriculum.</p>
<p>While I support the core curriculum in general, there are those of us where we'd be just as well off without it. In retrospect, I was one, and my rising senior S is probably the same.</p>
<p>As an English Lit. graduate from the UC system, back in the Bronze Age (as my kids seem to think), I was subject to the "breadth" requirements, which meant I had to take the biological and physical science requirements (2 classes each!!!) at the local JC just to be able to pass them. No, I could not pass them or get an acceptable grade at that level. And, I must say, they mean nothing to me today. It was something to get out of the way. Had I been free to take classes in a different discipline, I would have certainly been more than happy to supplement my needed units with Comp. Lit, Mythology, etc. I actually find more use for this sort of thing in my daily life and profession (and I'm in the financial biz) than I do advanced math or science. But that's just me.</p>