Lauren Hatch
Prof. Amy Amoroso
English 110
5 September 2017
As time goes on, more and more generations are sending their children off to receive a higher education. The importance of an education beyond the high school level seems like it should be the obvious answer. Students should want to grow and continue their education and know, coming right out of high school, what they want to do for the rest of their lives. There are so many job opportunities out there, but there is a very small amount that you can even apply for if you do not have some sort of college education. So as time goes on and it becomes more of a ‘norm’ we are going to have to adapted roll with it, or get left behind and be forgotten.
Barnetts view on education is a wise one, stating that a higher education is not complete unless the student realizes that, no matter how much effort he puts in, or how much library research, there are no final answers. I may take this in a different direction then what is implied, but I see this as my basic high school experience. I would put in the work, do the homework, and try to come up with the best way, for me to learn the topics that were being discussed, just to walk into class and have the professor say that it was their way or no way. No reason. Just because it was easier and thats the way that it needed to be. The topics that you are learning do not bend to suit you and your needs, you need to bend your views to see the subject in a different light.
Now that I am pursuing a higher education and not just reading about ways to get one, I also fully agree with the liberal arts aspect of a college education. Just because you are going to school for one thing doesn’t mean that you should close your mind to other things in the world; wether this be a history course or an arts course, what good is it to shut down the creative side of your brain. This was Martha Nussbaums view. The more open you are to challenge yourself and use the creative side, the more likely you are to embrace all of life with open arms. Nassbaum states in Passage two from Education for Prof it, Education for Democracy that is is ‘about challenging the mind to become active, competent, and thoughtfully critical in a complex world’. So don’t make your mind narrow down to a few subjects and force it to stick with that for your whole life, allow yourself to be creative and enjoy the little things.
Knowing that being here and doing what I am I currently doing since I was 12, I fully respect both of these articles and can completely understand and relate to the concepts in both. What is an education without having a creative and more fun side, there has to be a good balance between work and play. Overall, being where I am in life in this moment, I fully agree and support both articles.
