Have you
guys ever wondered about how our classes in high school or college would be
useful for our future life? Is there one particular class that you feel wasted your time? If
you ever felt that, I am on the same boat as you. As many of you guys have
known, in our high school or college there is something called general
education which serves a purpose to make our knowledge more broad and aware of our surrounding and know a
little bit about anything other than our discipline. Indeed it is a
good thing to learn and get to know other subjects, but is it going to be
something useful for our future life? For me, it is debatable.
On my
first blog post, I already introduced myself, but let me refresh your memory in
case you forgot. I was a student in City College of San Francisco for 2 years
before transferring to San Francisco State University this Spring 2012. I would talk about the courses that I
took in City College because I have only taken few classes here in San
Francisco State. I have taken many General Education courses in order to be
able to transfer, some of them though are not very enjoyable, yet very time
consuming. Many of you might have taken History classes, some of you might find
it interesting, yet for me it was one of those classes that I dislike the most.
I took History 1 and History 17A back then when I was still in City College.
Those two History classes are the worst in my whole college life. It is not
that I do not respect American History, but I felt that I need to learn
everything from zero due to the fact that I did not born here. Obviously, there were many people in my
class that have taken U.S History class before in which would help them a lot
to understand all the materials given in the class. That class had two research
papers which were eight pages long each. What made it worst was that I did not
really understand the topic because I had to do research about Indian tribe in
which I never really learn or have a chance to get to know their history.
Like what I have said in the beginning, some people might argue that it would
help me to understand American history since I am a new-comer. However, as you
guys know my major is in Information System which does not have any relation to
U.S History. I am not saying that other general education classes are not the
same, but due to the amount of work that I had to do for my History class, I
would say that it was The worst
general education class that I have ever taken.
My most useful class though would be ISYS
350 that I took in here in San Francisco State. This class is one of the
required major class in order for you to be able to register into a
higher-ranked class (ISYS 471, ISYS 464, etc). In my opinion, this class is
very useful because it covers a lot of programming languages such as C# and
Java Web Design. Even though some people say that this is one of the hardest
class in ISYS major, yet I feel that this class is actually interesting because
we will learn how to design a website and how to make it work. Furthermore, we
also will learn how to use Visual Basic in order to be able to run C# . For
those of you who have basic knowledge on C++ should not have a hard time
learning C# since they are very similar. However, I also believe that this
class become fun and enjoyable due to the professor who taught this class. He
explains everything visually and do it step by step and open to any questions
that the student may have. I always feel that teacher is one of the most
crucial aspect in learning effectiveness. Unorganized and boring teacher will
make student to become less motivated to actually pay attention to the lecture
which resulting in bad performance in the class and learn nothing.
In the
end, this is my personal thought and experience. Everyone can have different
opinion from me and I am not urging anyone not to take History classes, but I
am discussing about how I feel that some of my previous classes and how it
would affect my career.
I understand the point that you re making about general education courses in college. After going to school for 12 years, we still go to college and get that “refresher” I guess you can call it; of all the subjects we have already studied. While you make the argument about history classes I think it is a lot bigger than that. Yes, history is boring but maybe a math class could be equally boring depending on the person. I think college should be focused on the major that you are studying for you job field. Within each major there are already specific classes that can act as these general ed classes that they make us take. I know that I had to take a statistics class as part of my general ed, then I had to turn right back around and take a statistics class that goes with my major. That I do not understand. I know you were upset about the history classes but at least it is over with and we all have classes that we feel are useless!
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way you do about general education. I never took History because I really dislike learning about history. I would take other courses in order to fulfill that requirement, so I took courses on the latin diaspora and history of drugs and wars in America, which were pretty interesting; However it does not increase my knowledge for my future career. Even though I wish we did not have to take general education courses, I think they are good because we will focus so many years of our lives into courses that pertain to our career that is good to also take other courses that can help us have more knowledge on other aspects of our lives.
ReplyDeleteThe reason colleges require general education is to make sure everyone has a solid educational base and to make more money off each student. First let me explain the optimistic view of general education. Colleges understand that their students have come from many different places, perhaps with different levels of basic education. Therefore, reinstating these basic courses gives equal educational opportunities to all their students (theoretically speaking). Universities want their students to graduate with a concentrated education (their major) and a well rounded education (general education)to thrive in a successful career. They hope that their students become wealthy and famous, so they can publically praise their success due to their school, inspiring more students to attend.
ReplyDeleteHowever, my pessimistic view on general education is more realistic. Since universities realize most of us aren't going to become a marketing symbol for their school they try to suck as much money out of us as possible. We've all mentioned that most general education classes are a "waste of time," for us that is. However, the school makes more money for every student that waste's their time. General education on average takes 4 semesters’s to complete. That is a lot of tuition that most students feel is a "waste of time."