College has a different meaning for different people. However, most college students in my generation I feel like either go to college because that is what is expected of them or they want a great job that allows them to support their family.
For those students who want to be a doctor, or lawyer, they go into college knowing that they will be in school for a long time. However, for the businessman, they often want an internship that will lead them to their first job right out of college.
Is there anyway we could make schooling quicker? So, we can get out to the job field as early as possible? Some already do because they graduate early because they overload classes but I mean faster like 2 years faster? Why not just cut out the general education classes? Why does an english teacher need to take math, and a math teacher need to take world literature. Why does a businessman need to take geology, when is he going to use that?
Well, Arthur Holmes in his book "The Idea of Christian College?" discusses that education is not only instrumental in value meaning that you can use it as a tool to get you somewhere else, but it is also intrinsic in value meaning it has value in itself. He also says we are asking the wrong question, We shouldn't be asking what education can do
for me? but what it can do
to me?
A Liberal Arts Education is for the whole of the person and can not only prepare you for a job, but for your whole life. It teaches you how to think, how to learn, and so that you may be equipped for wherever God may lead you.
Sure, you may never use geology in the business world, but geology trained you to process and to think in a certain way that any other business class wouldn't, so when your boss gives you a project that requires you to think in that same way, you are set equipped.
You may never use calculus teaching english to 7th graders but because math may have been a struggle for you and you had to push through it and stubbornly try to understand it. Then, when a child in your classroom is hard to love or understand you can push through it and try to love him and teach him the best you can. Or maybe a child who is great at math is in your english class and doesn't think just like you do, you can teach him differently with the methods you learned teaching yourself math.
General education classes maybe a struggle and seem like a waste but the enable you to learn how to think deeply, and learn new things. They make you a more rounded person who is more marketable to any job that might come your way. See if you don't have general education courses, then you are only trained for one specific field and if that field becomes obsolete then you are in trouble. However, at a liberal arts college, that's a college with general education courses, you are prepared for anything that life may through out you.
In addition, God has called us to love him with all our mind, and what better way to do it than to learn how to learn and how to think and to honor him by succeeding in our general education courses as well.
Works Cited
Holmes, Arthur F. The Idea of a
Christian College. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987.
