Term Paper on "Education Philosophy - Curricula Considering Mandatory College"

Term Paper 7 pages (1942 words) Sources: 2 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Education Philosophy - Curricula

CONSIDERING MANDATORY COLLEGE CURICULUM REQUIREMENTS

Mandatory Academic Requirements in Math, Science and Foreign Language:

College is supposed to provide a comprehensive education that prepares students for the professional environment where they may encounter the need for knowledge in many areas in addition to their particular field of academic focus. Mathematics skills are required in many common daily applications, such as financial negotiations, personal finances, complying with U.S. tax codes, mortgages, and myriad other specific circumstances where ignorance of basic mathematics is detrimental to one's interests.

Likewise, we live in an age where science permeates our lives in practically every respect. Modern motor vehicles employ sophisticated internal mechanisms; we take regular medications to maintain our health and address diseases, some of which require an understanding of potential adverse interactions that can have deadly consequences; and our kitchen appliances include microwave ovens emitting microwave radiation to cook our food. Perhaps the most ubiquitous aspects of the inclusion of science into our daily lives is the personal computer that many of us use for essential communications, research, and even online shopping and bill-paying. Maintaining personal computer hardware and implementing regular software updates requires a degree of scientific understanding that one learns in general science classes in college. One of the most important aspects of scientific appreciation is the nature of the scientific method, which applies just as well to non-scientific matters. Mandatory college science courses introduce students to the principle of scientific inquiry, which may be even more important than much of the subject matter actually covered in the class. More than ever before, science is a part of American life and, therefore, a person who is ignorant of scientific principles is handicapped by virtue of that ignorance.

The world is rapidly becoming smaller in the sense that increasing globalization now enables domestic business entities to branch out to foreign markets and reach potential customer and client bases that greatly increase revenue potential over the strictly domestic scope of modern business. In that sense, the usefulness of multiple language fluency is much greater than it was for previous generations of college students.

Whereas in the recent past American students studied the so-called "classic" languages such as French, Greek, and Latin, those languages represented purely academic achievements rather than functional necessity. However, today, the complexion of American society has also changed significantly in the last few decades and bilingual capacity, especially in Spanish, is becoming a virtual necessity in modern American business as well as in ordinary, every day social life. Furthermore, the modern American economy is so unstable that choices of career made in college may no longer provide a permanent narrow vocational application.

Unlike previous generations of American students, contemporary adults may undergo more career changes throughout a lifetime than their parents, many of whom retained the same position, (or at least the same vocational field) from the time of their college graduation until their retirement. Consequently, narrowing one's educational focus to one specific area of instruction may hamper future opportunities in connection with career changes necessitated by circumstances and economic realities over which the individual may have little control, if any.

Since a college education is supposed to prepare students for life in a more general sense in addition to functional expertise in their major course of study, college curricula should continue to require mandatory participation in introductory courses in general studies including mathematics, science, and especially, foreign languages.

2. Critical Analysis:

In the most general sense, it is true that a college education is supposed to provide a comprehensive education that goes beyond specialization in a specific academic field or specialty. However, unlike previous generations of American students who may not have had the benefit of qualified primary and secondary education (Carter 2001), nowadays, most Americans graduate from high school. Mandatory federal requirements now ensure that American primary and secondary educational institutions provide the necessary instruction to enable graduates to perform the mathematical calculations required of modern life.

Relatively few adult Americans actually reach adulthood without the ability to calculate change for purchases or the other mathematical calculations ordinarily encountered in adulthood. Furthermore, college mathematics courses generally go far beyond the types of mathematics requirements of daily life and consist of calculus and symbolic logic that is inapplicable to the lives of most students who do not choose biological or technical science-related courses of major instruction.

Similarly, it is certainly true that science permeates our lives more than ever before to the extent that the daily appliances, vehicles, and computers we use are much more technologically sophisticated than the comparable equipment used by previous generations. On the other hand, college science courses for non-science majors do not provide instruction intended to enable graduates to perform their own repairs on their vehicle or microwaves.

Likewise, whereas computers do require a certain degree of expertise in their use and maintenance, college general studies science courses are not intended to enable students to repair computers. More importantly, the types of computer maintenance and upgrades normally required of most computer users are learned in a more practical manner through the gradual use of the technology. In any case, where computer equipment actually requires servicing or technical repair, even most science majors, (particularly those in the biological sciences), employ professional PC technicians.

Modern educational theorists like Howard Gardner (1991) and many others have determined that academic aptitude varies substantially from one student to another. More specifically, students may be extremely gifted in some areas and comparatively less able in others. To some degree, the specific talents and directional aptitudes become evident much earlier than previously thought, with primary students already exhibiting focused interest in the academic areas, that much later and only in retrospect, suggest that it might have been beneficial to allow them to express their preferences much earlier in their academic careers rather than later (Gardner 1991).

Therefore, instead of imposing continued mandatory studies requirements on students as late in their academic career as college, the emphasis should be the exact opposite. By the time students enter college education programs, most of them already have a general idea of their academic interests as well as their eventual vocational area of specialization. Requiring college students to invest valuable time and energy into areas outside their intended majors is not conducive to optimal performance in those areas, nor is it necessarily beneficial to them in general.

Finally, it is true that the world is getting smaller in the figurative sense and it is equally true that American society is becoming increasingly multi-ethnic and bilingual.

However, by the time students reach college, their innate ability to learn new languages to which they have never previously been exposed is substantially less than their ability to do so in childhood (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

Therefore, to whatever extent it may be beneficial to require mandatory participation in foreign language studies, it makes much more sense to impose those requirements on primary and secondary students rather than on college students for whom learning a new language detracts unnecessarily from their ability to focus on other more important academic areas, including their choice of major course of academic study towards a degree in their chosen field of future employment and intellectual interest.

3. Rewrite Incorporating Critical Analysis:

Undoubtedly, a well-rounded education is necessary for competence in ordinary adult life. For this reason, many college programs have traditionally imposed mandatory general studies as part of their curricula, including mathematics, science courses, and the study of foreign languages. Typically, those programs require non-science majors to take courses in general sciences and mathematics; likewise, they require science (and other) majors to take liberal arts courses and to satisfy foreign language studies requirements.

However, by the time most students enter college programs, they already know enough mathematics to perform all the calculations likely to be required in non-technical academic fields and in every day adult life. Therefore, instead of mandatory mathematics requirements for all college students, it would make much more sense to do so only in the case of students who perform poorly on the mathematics portion of the SAT. Another option that would be preferable to across-the-board mathematics requirements would be to administer tests to all incoming students to determine whether they require remedial attention in mathematics.

Generally, only students who exhibit a specific need for additional mathematics instruction should be required to enroll in mandatory college mathematics courses. In any case, any such requirements should relate exclusively to the types of mathematics normally encountered in ordinary life rather than college-level calculus or other mathematics courses of limited usefulness to non-science majors.

Science is also a fundamental part of modern life, at least in the sense that so many of the conveniences of life rely on scientific principles. However, no mandatory science course provided to fulfill general studies college curriculum requirements is ever going to enable a non-science major to apply those concepts in a practical matter to repair vehicles, kitchen appliances, or motor vehicles. On the other… READ MORE

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