Bricks: Higher Education
Note: This essay is not written based on any studies made by social researchers or statistics. These are purely thoughts and observations of my own personal experience.
Pt. 1: Commercialization
First things first, I do like knowledge and learning. I think it's great. What I don't think is great is how over-commercialized and unnecessary a large part of higher education is. College is expensive. You're paying for tuition, books, dorms (if you stay on campus), and various other fees. Then there's the money spent on gas to get to campus, food, and the general cost of living. All for a piece of paper that essentially says, "You done it! Now go out with this diploma and struggle to find a job in the field that you spent 8 years of your life studying for."
I see commercials advertising for different colleges and the image that they put forth is nothing like the reality that students face. Stress, test anxiety, buckets of tears, and loss of sleep from staying up the night before, cramming for a test, are all realities of real-life college students. What I see in the advertisements are smiling faces, people all looking attentive in class, and story after story of people saying, "This university changed my life!" In reality, when I go to class, nobody is happy to be there, everybody is bored, and few people seem to have any ambition or direction as to what they want to do.
There's one aspect about college, in particular, that I just simply do not understand the need for. That's general education classes. You know, the maths, history, sciences, and the like. Why are they needed? Isn't that what we studied in high school? If not, then what was the point of high school? So far, I haven't learned anything in college that couldn't have been learned while I was in high school. So what's the point? You might be thinking, "But you've got to have so many credit hours to get such and such degree!" There's something else, too.
Credit hours. Given, any education is going to take time, but the idea that someone must have so many hours completed to get their degree is a bit ridiculous. Most credit hours don't even go towards your major. They're just more general ed classes, put there to fill in the extra credit hours needed to get that degree. It's a vicious cycle.
Pt. 2: Conformism
In today's modern society, uniqueness is encouraged (even though companies benefit from the idea of conformism). However, in the school system, they aren't focused on making sure students know what they need to know to be successful in their field of study. They seem to be more focused on making sure everyone generally knows the same things. Instead of ill-equipping students with useless knowledge like how a jet engine works, let's make sure they are knowledgeable on their chosen major. If I go to school to learn how to be a writer, then I don't need to know how to find the linear equation of a graph. It's pretty simple.
The reason that we're all taught the same basic stuff is because it's easier to control people when they all think alike. Perhaps we'd benefit from being taught how to build thought processes instead of being taught how and what to think. There's a certain lack of individuality that comes from all being taught how to think the same. So learn to think for yourself and stop expecting people to think for you! Otherwise, you're just another brick in the wall.
In conclusion, higher education seems to be a necessary evil. You must have a degree to get any type of job these days. It's sad, but true, that the decline of education has stooped to a point where it's all about the money and less about the knowledge. In the end, do what you feel you must, but don't become a brick. Good place to end, I think. On a Pink Floyd reference.
Peace out, lovelies.
Pt. 1: Commercialization
First things first, I do like knowledge and learning. I think it's great. What I don't think is great is how over-commercialized and unnecessary a large part of higher education is. College is expensive. You're paying for tuition, books, dorms (if you stay on campus), and various other fees. Then there's the money spent on gas to get to campus, food, and the general cost of living. All for a piece of paper that essentially says, "You done it! Now go out with this diploma and struggle to find a job in the field that you spent 8 years of your life studying for."
I see commercials advertising for different colleges and the image that they put forth is nothing like the reality that students face. Stress, test anxiety, buckets of tears, and loss of sleep from staying up the night before, cramming for a test, are all realities of real-life college students. What I see in the advertisements are smiling faces, people all looking attentive in class, and story after story of people saying, "This university changed my life!" In reality, when I go to class, nobody is happy to be there, everybody is bored, and few people seem to have any ambition or direction as to what they want to do.
There's one aspect about college, in particular, that I just simply do not understand the need for. That's general education classes. You know, the maths, history, sciences, and the like. Why are they needed? Isn't that what we studied in high school? If not, then what was the point of high school? So far, I haven't learned anything in college that couldn't have been learned while I was in high school. So what's the point? You might be thinking, "But you've got to have so many credit hours to get such and such degree!" There's something else, too.
Credit hours. Given, any education is going to take time, but the idea that someone must have so many hours completed to get their degree is a bit ridiculous. Most credit hours don't even go towards your major. They're just more general ed classes, put there to fill in the extra credit hours needed to get that degree. It's a vicious cycle.
Pt. 2: Conformism
In today's modern society, uniqueness is encouraged (even though companies benefit from the idea of conformism). However, in the school system, they aren't focused on making sure students know what they need to know to be successful in their field of study. They seem to be more focused on making sure everyone generally knows the same things. Instead of ill-equipping students with useless knowledge like how a jet engine works, let's make sure they are knowledgeable on their chosen major. If I go to school to learn how to be a writer, then I don't need to know how to find the linear equation of a graph. It's pretty simple.
The reason that we're all taught the same basic stuff is because it's easier to control people when they all think alike. Perhaps we'd benefit from being taught how to build thought processes instead of being taught how and what to think. There's a certain lack of individuality that comes from all being taught how to think the same. So learn to think for yourself and stop expecting people to think for you! Otherwise, you're just another brick in the wall.
In conclusion, higher education seems to be a necessary evil. You must have a degree to get any type of job these days. It's sad, but true, that the decline of education has stooped to a point where it's all about the money and less about the knowledge. In the end, do what you feel you must, but don't become a brick. Good place to end, I think. On a Pink Floyd reference.
Peace out, lovelies.
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