Rethinking general education

I was sitting in the final 100-level general education course of my college career doing my best impersonation of an attentive student, when I began to consider the usefulness of the requirement of such a class.

As I listened to the lecturing grad student, who would have undoubtedly rather been some place else, discuss at great length something which I’m sure was terribly important to someone, this question floated through my mind: What is it, exactly, that I’m supposed to get out of this?

Ah, the ubiquitous question of disenchanted undergraduates everywhere.

If I remember correctly, they told me as a freshman that by taking a class under this particular subheading I would end up being a more well-rounded student, future employee and citizen of the world — or some litany of phrases with an equally impressive tenor.

In my dewy-eyed, youthfully enthusiastic freshman state, this all made
perfect sense. 

In the spring semester of my senior year, I’m slightly less dewy-eyed and
infinitely more cynical. 

Rather than discussing my current course and ruining any hope I have of getting a decent grade in the class, I’m going to turn to an earlier example of the absurdity of our current system — my first natural and mathematical science course: Psychoanalysis and Philosophy.

If that title doesn’t sound like a science or a math class, that’s because, in fact, it had only the most tenuous relationship to either field.

We spent much of our time discussing what it meant to be human, how philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle saw the structure of the human psyche, what exactly the soul was and how all of this factored into Freud’s largely discredited psychoanalytic theory.

I loved the course and learned a great deal, but there is no way in good conscience that I could call it a science class.

Fast-forward to my E321: Intermediate Microeconomic Theory  class, where on a daily basis we worked with calculus-driven models and spent time finding derivatives to solve the problems we had been given.

This, according to the University, is neither math nor science. 

I’m sure somewhere within the administration there is a well-informed, and even more well-intentioned bureaucrat that can tell me exactly why my psychoanalysis course counted as a natural and mathematical science, but intermediate microeconomic theory did not.

In the end, I know the distinction ultimately comes down to an arbitrary decision by an individual or group of individuals who may or may not have had quite a few years pass since the last time they took an undergraduate course.

That’s the fundamental problem with creating universal requirements in an educational setting where you have dozens of majors, hundreds of classes and thousands of students.

Wherever you draw the line to distinguish one “type” of study from another, you’re bound to have really bizarre and uneven results. 

I don’t know what the solution to the problem is, but I can comfortably say the current setup doesn’t accomplish what it sets out to do. I’m fairly certain that it can’t.

Perhaps we shouldn’t impose artificial restrictions that benefit few and irritate most, but rather allow students to take the courses they need or want to prepare themselves for whatever their next steps may be.

­— jontodd@indiana.edu