“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
– Thomas Sowell, economist
An anecdote about education vs. experience, from the 1958 movie “Teacher’s Pet” …
In 1958, a romantic comedy called “Teacher’s Pet” presented its audience with some surprisingly deep coverage of the topic of education. In the movie, Clark Gable plays an old-school newspaper reporter with a contempt for formal education, who unexpectedly falls for a journalism professor played by Doris Day. He starts out with contempt for eggheads like her, but grows to have deep respect for them, while they gain an equally deep respect for his practical experience. One of them is a mutual friend (and Clark Gable’s competitor for Doris Day), a psychology professor played by Gig Young. Clark Gable comes to find that his experience commands more “serious” respect among these professors than he thought, and realizes that he is smarter than he believed. At the same time, though, he realizes how much he has missed out on by not getting a formal education, and grows to respect the journalism lessons taught by Doris Day in her classroom.
… with a character in the movie who has to excuse himself from educated conversations
Clark Gable is unfamiliar with certain topics taught by general education, and has to excuse himself from conversations about them when they go over his head, going to the men’s room as a convenient pretext to leave them. At one point in the movie, he thus laments that he has “spent one-third of my life going to, staying in, and coming back from men’s rooms.” It’s a funny line, but it probably describes the experience of many who haven’t gained a formal education, even if their informal education has nonetheless been quite good. If we want to spare our students this unpleasant embarrassment, we should take pains to require some general education of them, at least when they enroll in college (and preferably sooner). That way, they won’t sound like idiots, when people judge their intelligence by whether or not they know certain things. We cannot possibly teach them everything (which would be an unreasonable goal anyway), but we can teach them some things.
A scene from “Teacher’s Pet” (1958)
The need for teaching students how to think, and not just how to read
Of course, part of this education should include some basic experience with reading and writing. These language skills are surprisingly applicable in a wide variety of professions. But as the economist Thomas Sowell once put it, “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” If we want to do justice to our students, we need to teach them how to think, in a way that they’ll actually use this knowledge in everyday life. (Or, at least, some of them will – others may well be hopeless emotional cases, who cannot be helped.)
Thomas Sowell, economist
The conflict between teaching “critical thinking” and indoctrinating the students
“Critical thinking” is a popular catchphrase of the academic world today, but it is surprising how little of critical thinking is actually taught today. Professors talk about it until they’re blue in the face, but in my experience, they seldom seem to teach their students how to think critically. Sometimes, they instead teach unquestioning obedience to the various fads of the ivory tower. Instead of education, some seem to provide indoctrination, repackaged for their gullible listeners as “true education” (which they may actually believe it to be). There’s nothing wrong with being exposed to their ideas, of course, and students benefit from hearing opposing ideas from people who actually believe them. As a conservative, I am glad that I was exposed to various liberal ideas in college, since it was an opposition study that was beneficial to my political activism. But liberal students are seldom exposed to anything that they disagree with, making it hard for them to learn any “critical thinking” as a result.
Noam Chomsky, a liberal scholar whose ideas I was exposed to in college
Problems with “political correctness” on the college campus of today
Of course, general education should sometimes have political goals. For example, it should teach students how to be citizens, with an awareness of their government and how it works. It should teach them its language and its history (perhaps even its literature), at least at basic levels. But I sometimes think that there’s an overemphasis on “sensitivity training,” with speech codes designed to stifle anything that could be construed to offend various minorities. Universities should be the great guardians of the free speech promised in the First Amendment, but seldom are they actually such. More often, they have long lists of regulations designed to foster various kinds of “political correctness,” a term that has rightly become unpopular because of its association with these restrictions on free speech. If we really want to promote free speech, we should allow students to say what they want, provided that they defend it as logically and evidentially as possible.
United States Bill of Rights, which includes the First Amendment protections for freedom of speech
General education requirements have gotten far too complicated
But let me leave this particular soapbox for a moment, and move to another of equal importance. This is the unnecessary multiplication of general education requirements today. It used to be that general education requirements were much simpler, although they did not lack for true academic rigor despite this. I think that general education requirements have gotten too specific, leaving little room for electives within them and exploring the student’s own interests – one of the true goals of education, because it fosters lifelong learning in these areas that they’re interested in. I understand that some majors must indeed be very specific about their requirements, and require more coursework in their own departments than some other majors would be compelled to require. But it is a travesty, in my opinion, that general education requirements have gotten so complicated. Often the students need extensive consultation with advisors just to realize which classes they’re supposed to take for their majors, and in what order they’re supposed to take them. The system of prerequisites is so complicated that students can sometimes get different answers from different advisors, and often have a terrible time navigating these complex waters as a result. It doesn’t have to be this way, in my opinion – they can get just as good (and rigorous) of a general education with a comparatively simple set of general education requirements. It was once this way, and it can be this way again. General education requirements should be made simpler, and made more accessible to the unfortunate students – who are the true victims of this excessive complexity.
The building where I work, at Yavapai College (which includes helpful advising and tutoring)
Why it’s important to take classes that are unrelated to one’s major or career goals
Indeed, general education requirements should be significantly streamlined, but that does not mean that these requirements should be abolished. On the contrary, general education needs to remain in the curriculum, so that students will be exposed to many areas outside of their own major. Students often ask why they have to take “so many classes” that are unrelated to either their major, or to the job that they intend to get. One benefit is that, unlike the Clark Gable character, they won’t have to excuse themselves to go to the restroom every time someone talks about something they could have (but didn’t) learn in college. But another reason is that one doesn’t always know what classes will be useful to them after they graduate from college.
Another scene from “Teacher’s Pet” (1958)
An anecdote from my own general education, and how it helped me in my current job
Some of the most useful classes that I took were those that taught me to communicate, both orally and in writing. I sometimes think that I learned more “critical thinking” in my humanities classes than my business major was able to teach me. My math classes were equally useful, and helped to prepare me for my current job as a math tutor. I resented the math and science portions of my own requirements at the time, but I am now quite glad that I studied these things. They turned out to be much more useful to me than I would have thought, and helped me to better think about the world that I live in. Physics was surprisingly helpful, since a lot of the math problems that I help my students with are essentially physics problems, related to gravity and the motions of objects. I even found that some general education courses actually enriched my life – such as history, psychology, and philosophy. These were so interesting to me that I wondered what my life would have been like without my taking them.
Orson Scott Card, science fiction author who praised what general education did for him
Our school system should try to encourage a pursuit of lifelong learning
The science fiction writer Orson Scott Card gave an interesting commentary on general education at his website. “Like many young artists in love with their art,” says his website, “Card resented all the hours that the university required him to ‘waste’ on general education requirements; as a novelist, however, he found that those were the most useful parts of his college education.” (Source: His website) I tend to agree. As a business major, I can tell you that vocational and professional classes can be of immense benefit. But one would be surprised at how helpful general education can be to a student, and to their lives after graduation. At the very least, students should gain some respect for the vast variety of disciplines out there, and learn how much they can never know. As I said at the outset of this post, “It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance” (in the words of Thomas Sowell). This knowledge is one of the most beneficial results of education. After humbling them about how much they can never learn, it might be helpful then to inspire them with what they can learn, and begin a pursuit of lifelong learning in the process.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
– William Butler Yeats
If you liked this post, you might also like:
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Some thoughts about history education
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