Educational institutions have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields of study in which they are unlikely to succeed. [Specific Task Instruction: Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position
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I fundamentally agree with the proposition that students must take courses outside their major field of study to become “truly educated”. A contrary position would reflect a too-narrow view of higher education and its proper objectives. Nevertheless, I would caution that extending the propositions too far might risk undermining those objectives.
The primary reason why I agree with the proposition is that “true” education amounts to far more than gaining the knowledge and ability to excel in one’s major course of study and in one’s professional career. True education also facilitates an understanding of oneself, and tolerance and respect for the view points of others. Courses in psychology, sociology, and anthropology all serve these ends. “true” education also provides insight and perspective regarding one’s place in society and in the physical and metaphysical worlds. Courses in political science, philosophy, theology, and even sciences such as astronomy and physics can help a student gain this insight and perspective. Finally, no student can be truly educated without having gained an aesthetic appreciation of the world around us – through course work in literature, the fine arts, and the performing arts.
Becoming truly educated also requires sufficient mastery of one academic area to permit a student to contribute meaningfully to society later in life.
Yet, mastery of any specific area requires some knowledge about a variety of others. For example, a political-science student can fully understand that field only by understanding the various psychological, sociological, and historical forces that shape political ideology. An anthropologist cannot excel without understanding the social and political events that shape cultures, and without some knowledge of chemistry and geology for performing field work. Even computer engineering is intrinsically tied to other fields, even non-technical ones such as business, communications, and media.
Nevertheless, the call for a broad educational experience as the path to becoming truly educated comes with one important caveat. A student who merely dabbles in a hodge-podge of academic offerings, without special emphasis on any one, becomes a dilettante-lacking enough knowledge or experience in any single area to come away with anything valuable to offer. Thus, in the pursuit of true education students must be careful not overextend themselves-or risk defeating an important objective of education.
In the final analysis, to become truly educated one must strike a proper balance in one’s educational pursuits. Certainly, students should strive to excel in the specific requirements of their major course of study. However, they should complement those efforts by pursuing course work in a variety of other areas as well. By earnestly pursuing a broad education one gains the capacity not only to succeed in a career, but also to find purpose and meaning in that career as well as to understand and appreciate the world and its peoples. To gain these capacities is to become “truly educated”.