Putting too much of an emphasis on academic courses, no matter the interests of the specific student, is detrimental to education. When children do not enjoy what they are learning, they are less likely to do as well in school. Unfortunately, students generally do not have an opportunity to choose their curriculum until college, and by this point, the idea of education has been tainted, causing students to be less likely to want to continue their education after high school.
Even in college, some majors, though the students may enjoy them, are ridiculed, particularly arts and many social sciences. Since these majors are less likely to lead to a high paying job, students are generally pushed away from these paths. For instance, philosophy has a reputation of being a joke of a major, even in media. In an episode of Archer, the main character comes across a philosophy major. He asks what he can even do with that major, and the philosophy major replies that he can teach philosophy. Archer then ridicules him, saying he's just feeding into the cycle.
This ridicule can be much more personal. When a family member asks someone what they are majoring in, and the answer is not a STEM major, which generally leads to a better job, the ridicule ensues.
From a young age, children are forced to believe that arts aren't important, and that all that matters is Common Core. You focus on English, History, Science, and Math, and nothing else really matters.
The most disturbing fact is that this false belief that non-Common Core studies are "bad" doesn't stop after grade school. Students need to be pushed to enjoy their education, from kindergarten through graduate school.
Ironically, I think philosophy is actually one of the better majors one could choose, as it really encourages rigorous thinking and is usually a fairly challenging experience. It is interesting to recall that science was once a part of philosophy, under the heading of "natural philosophy," and of course was then ridiculed as useless sometimes, not because it wasn't practical, but because it was too practical! So let the haters hate, and philosophize and make art all you want.
ReplyDeleteWhile it does seem to suck that students are generally pushed to the four main courses in education and do not really get to choose what they want to do, I think that it is actually a good thing. Most kids have no idea what they want to do with their lives in high school, much less middle school and elementary school. Because of this, kids are pushed to focus on the more broad topics such as math english history and science, This broadly educates them so that when they do figure out what they want to do, they can focus their studies on that thing. If they do it too early, there is a big chance that they may not end up loving it as much as they think they do at the time. Then switching to something else can be incredibly difficult. Also, in the episode of Archer that you are talking about, the person was working on his PhD in Anthropology, not Philosophy
ReplyDeleteSuch a stickler for details! Just goes to show you the power of crowd sourcing information--especially about the minutiae of tv shows!
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