What Constitutes a Well-Rounded Education and Stupid LibArts Majors

[Pengwuino]

I've already read some god awful papers written by my peers in college. I wonder if they even bother reading over what they just vomited onto their papers.

That picture is funny though. Isn't there a real saying like that however? Obviously either "success" or "hard work" wasn't in the real saying. I'm thinking maybe "hard" wasn't suppose to be there? haha.

 

[MissSilvy]

I think the original saying is "The dictionary is the only place where 'success' comes before 'work'" if I remember correctly.

 

[franznietzsche]

I'm sure I've said this before, but shouldn't these sorts of classes be taught in high school? If they are, then why do you need to repeat them in university? If not, then what do you learn in high school?

For most Americans? Almost nothing.

An education, IMO, should cover literacy, numeracy, and logic until it is beaten into people's heads so thoroughly they can't open their mouths without some of it falling out.

If you have those three things you can learn anything (and I mean ANYTHING) else on your own as quickly as your own intellect will allow. If you don't know those three, all you can ever do is memorize and repeat, never understand. The vast majority of people in the US lack even a single one of them (I'm not using the normal definition of literacy here, where it would usually mean the ability to read and write, I rather mean something more sophisticated than that: the ability to read, write, and understand well). Subject education (history, economics, science) needs to come only after those skills are imparted.