NolanGrammarstyle

NolanStyle

The philosophy statement about USF's general education states that we attend college and get degrees in order to learn more about the world and the people in it. I don't think this is accurate because I have never been to any class that taught me about people. You cannot learn about the world and the people in it by reading textbooks and attending a class. People are diverse and dynamic figures that can only be studied face to face. No textbook will ever tell you how to be sociable or how to get along with others. It's like riding a bike, you could read a book about it and it might tell you how to balance and move your legs, but just by reading it you couldnt claim that you knew how to ride a bike. Experience is the key to understanding social interactions. You may learn how the world works in college but you will not learn about it or the people in it by hearing about it from someone else.

The philosophy statement also assumes that everyone enters a college already knowing what they want to accomplish there and what they aspire to do in life. "We attend a university to receive a general education, to study the liberal arts, and to prepare ourselves for entry into government, business, industry, or the professions". Many people go to college unsure of their future and seek simply to learn about possible opportunities rather that set on one goal. I also believe that while the philosophy statement is clear in the fact that people should be taught how to act based on studying societies, cultures, languages, and customs; it is too narrow, it puts everything in western standards. It is a good idea on paper but once again, reading about other cultures is no comparison to being among them. I don't think anyone can come to truly appreciate the diversity of the world and understand how different cultures live without actually going out there and studying them.

I also don't believe the university follows the philosophy statement very closely due to the fact that the statement says "We learn about ourselves as individuals and not just as citizens of the universe". In most of the classes I have been to I have almost never felt like an individual. We are all graded based on strict grading policies and are all seen as the same for standardized tests. We all have to do the same assignments and are graded based on set parameters that we all must adhere to. We are taught to blend in and not stray from the norm. We are taught to be sheep and not to break the rules.

All in all I believe that the philosophy statement for General Education is trying to make the subject sound more integral and important to society than it really is. They say that general education is a foundation for effective democratic government, and even use the Greeks as an example, but most of the Greek population were uneducated farners, rendering this comparison useless. The university may like to believe that they are teaching us to survive in the world, but they are teaching us how to survive in college. They may think they are making us feel warm and fuzzy because they see us as "individuals" but I think that they succeed in doing quite the opposite.

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