While brainstorming the topic of this week’s blog post, inspiration struck when my colleague, Lisa Helmers, discovered her SAT essay prompt from 2005. Here is the prompt preceded by a quote by Philip D. Jordan, author of The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.
I cannot comprehend those who emphasize or recognize only what is useful. I am concerned that learning for learning's sake is no longer considered desirable, that everything we do and think must be directed toward the solution of a practical problem. More and more we seem to try to teach how to make a good living and not how to live a good life.
Assignment: Do people put too much emphasis on learning practical skills? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
After reading the prompt, I began to reflect on the merits of the liberal arts education I received as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Certainly, the psychology and philosophy courses I had taken provided me with delicious food for thought. I was exploring concepts and theories that dramatically changed my perception of the world. It was all very exciting!
Looking back, I now wonder if these courses in the social sciences would qualify as “useful" or "useless" knowledge, especially when my private SAT tutors were always talking about other degrees. I also wonder if the “usefulness” of knowledge is the best criterion for defining the value of a college education. For me, college was a four-year lesson in building autonomy, resilience, and self-concept. While learning about Aristotelian Ethics, I was also being schooled in the obligations of adulthood: finding a place to live, managing my finances, and building social networks. College provided a protected space for me to mature and try my hand at life’s inevitable challenges. It turns out that my experience is a fairly common occurrence in the Western world; in fact, Jeffrey Arnett, Professor of Psychology at Clark University, has coined the term “Emerging Adulthood” to describe the time period (often during college) in which adolescents practice adult roles as they transition to adulthood in their twenties. In retrospect, I definitely see myself as the poster child for Emerging Adulthood.
But in today’s age of economic hardship, could Emerging Adulthood become a relic of the (privileged) past? According to journalist and education blogger extraordinaire, Dana Goldstein, the rising price of college paired with the tremendous debt of student loans makes a university education less accessible and less desirable. In 2003,the average accumulated debt for four-year college students was a whopping $24,000. But here lies the timeworn predicament: Do we risk the financial burden of a college education in order to broaden our intellectual horizons, “grow up,” and enter the job market with a B.A.; or, do we attempt to build a career early, find an entry level position, and allow the uncertainties of the job market to mature us?
I am clearly biased toward the benefits of a college education and the privilege of Emerging Adulthood…but my voice is losing its potency beside the arguments of the opposition. Professor X, the anonymous author of In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic, is an adjunct professor at a prominent community college in his area. He believes that college has become an intolerable expense for underprivileged groups who are solely seeking employment. For example, X wonders, what is the usefulness of a college-level anthropology course to a student who would want nothing more than a salaried administrative assistant position? X’s teacher-student experience is defined by a mutual sense of estrangement and confusion. Teacher and learner stare at each other incredulously, "Is this all really necessary?"
So where do you stand? What was your experience of college and why or why not has it ‘paid off?’ Was the knowledge you learned ‘useful?’ Knowing what you do now, would you advise students, families, and schools to reconsider their approach to higher education? Whaddya think?
0 comments:
Post a Comment