During
this time of year, students will be preparing for their college
entrance exams: a very trying time not only for students but also for
parents. A professor writing in the Peace Weekly notes that many
students being interviewed for the exams are unable to answer the
easiest of the questions. Their faces turn red and they cry, he says,
which prompts him to ask a question he cannot refrain from asking: What
is the reason for education?
The
big difference between high school and college, he believes, is the
student's decision to pick a major in college. The hope is that picking a
good major and going deeply into it will enable one to find work and to
succeed in one's chosen field. There would be few students who, on
graduating, would not be thinking about what they will be doing with
their major. There is a connection, most students believe, between
picking a major that immediately prepares them for their future work--a
connection that would be missing if they were to take any of the
humanities, making them unable to compete in the marketplace with the
better prepared students. What is the realty? the professor asks.
He
uses the example of the United States: Those who graduate with degrees
from the humanities find work in many areas of life. Those who are in
the field of education say the study of the humanities--though not
immediately helpful in the marketplace--in the long run is a better
choice in college. The days of staying on the job for a lifetime, he
says, is over. A person who started off in his major and remains in that
work for more than 10 years is not the norm. Persons change, work
changes, just as the rivers and mountains change.
During
the Victorian days in England Cardinal Henry Newman was asked to start a
university in Ireland, prompting him to write the book "The Idea of a
University," from which the professor quotes the following: "A
university should be teaching a variety of subjects. Students can major
in a small number of subjects but should immerse themselves in the
traditions of the university and to understand the whole outline of the
system of knowledge, the underlying principles of knowledge, the breath
of each course of study, their shadow and their light, the good and the
bad points. General education is to cultivate the philosophic
inclinations of the mind towards personal liberty, balance, serenity,
the golden mean, and wisdom."
The
professor ends by mentioning that about the same time as Newman,
Wilhelm Von Humboldt in Germany took the initiative in starting a
research university, whose ideas spread throughout the world. Now in the
21st century, the ideas of Newman are being rediscovered and interest
in the humanities is returning to the world of education, aided, it is
believed, by the rapid changes in the world. The movement away from the
modern specialization of education to a more general liberal arts
education is, the professor says, a necessary step back into the past,
where, as Newman believed, learning was valued for its own sake. The
professor would like to tell parents of high school students who are
preparing for college in the humanities not to worry, for it is the most
modern of the majors and the one that will give them the best
opportunity for a fulfilling life.
The
business magazine Forbes reported last year that more than 60 percent
of college graduates find work in a field outside their major. Which is
the reason many are saying it is better to have a general and
transferable education in preparation for both work and life.
