Pillars of education (Was Re: 50 Book Challenge 2008)

Dark Phoenix wrote:

> Add this to the trend of requiring 
> less courses outside of the students major and you have a lot of people
who 
> don’t know much about anything but their one small focus. No wonder when

> they go out into the world they don’t see the big picture. They’ve been 
> taught not to!

Well this describes me, so I'm going to try to defend this trend.  The 
world doesn't need more generalists who can see all kinds of "big 
pictures", but lack the skills to actually do anything.  I spent 4 years 
taking basically nothing but math courses (plus a course in logic, a 
little bit of programming and some economics).  And it really did take 
those 4 years do get general grasp of mathematics plus a reasonable 
understanding of my specific area.  I could spend another 4 years taking 
nothing but math courses and still have plenty left to learn.  4 years 
is not a lot of time when all is said and done, and if you're going to 
learn something useful in that time then you better get your head down 
and focus.  People should have gotten a basic general education from 
high school.  If people have interests outside their narrow field (and 
lets face it, most people do) they'll pick it up on their own.  If they 
don't, then forcing them to take courses in stuff they have no interest 
in is hardly going to help.

Note that I'm not saying having interests in a wide area is in any way 
bad, but that should be your responsibility once you leave high school. 
  University should be about teaching you a lot about one thing, not a 
little about everything.

Dag