Post your response by 10 PM, Wed. Sept. 21st:
I’m intentionally leaving today’s prompt open to let you respond to whatever caught your eye in the readings: Respond to whatever you’d like to in Cronon’s “Only Connect” and Dewey’s chapter “Education as a Necessity of Life.” Feel free to agree; disagree; express confusion, concern, or disbelief. Then, just like last time, include one question that you’d like to bring into discussion on Thursday.
Only two constraints—you must make substantive reference (that is pull out some examples, page numbers, etc.) to Dewey’s and Cronon’s ideas, and make this post at least 300-500 words.
Then--by 10 AM on Thursday, Sept.--post a 50-100 word comment on one of your fellow student's comments.
Right before every semester end, students are always busy working with their academic advisor, try to figure out what courses they should take in order to fulfill their undergrad requirement and graduate on time. Scheduling classes always be a big decision for students. Have we ever ask ourselves what the major concerns are while we schedule classes? Why I am taking this course? Will I actually willing to do well in this course? In William Cronon’s article “Only Connect…The Goal of a Liberal Education”, Cornon accuses the current education system that it has been too strict about making students take certain courses and how many credits they need in order to graduate (Cronon, P1). In my own experience, I always automatically restricted myself to take the requirement courses first due to the concern of whether I will be eligible to graduate on time. Even though we have the right to take whatever courses we want, there is a restriction standing behind. I wholeheartedly endorse what Cronon insists is a current issue for some students who are struggling with their courses which they have no passion and interest with.
ReplyDeleteThough I concede that students should have the right to pick up their courses without any restriction standing behind, I still insist that student should be exposed to diverse discipline courses in order to train him or her into a round developed person. In Cronon’s view, “all the required courses in the world will fail to give us a liberal education if, in the act of requiring them, we forget that their purpose is to nurture human freedom and growth”(Cronon, P2). I strongly agree with Cronon up to the point that the main purpose of our liberal education curriculum is to nurture human freedom and growth. But, I question that if there is no such a curriculum requirement exists whether students would be willing to take diverse discipline and difficult courses. Lazy is part of human nature. It is usual that people prefer to take a shortcut or easier path.
Question: If there is no such a curriculum requirement, will you willing to take intensive courses? Beside the curriculum requirement system, what other way or system you think is going to be a better way to evaluate whether a student is qualify to graduate.
ReplyDelete