For the first time since I started college, glancing at my schedule does not make me wince. No longer am I bound by university rules to muddle my way through four hours of a science lab or to fight in a math class to make numbers add up correctly (in my case, they rarely do). I am finally free to tailor my college course work so that I may revel in my personal paradise of coursework: doing nothing but reading and writing for a whole semester.
But even I have to grudgingly admit that without those much-maligned general education classes, my academic perspective would be much narrower. I am not going to waste space here talking about how I feel like a more “well-rounded individual,” because if I learned anything from applying to college, anyone who claims to be one must have lied on at least half of his or her application. What struck me most about my experience in general education classes was perhaps the opposite of what they were designed to do, and yet perhaps the most critical part of the whole process: creating threads of interdisciplinary thought to link diverse subjects and create an academic system that is inextricably tied together.
A university’s task is to ensure that its students receive the best education possible, and the American system has taken this to mean that students must receive a “complete” education with a base knowledge of all areas and disciplines. What it fails to realize, in many cases, is that our society is so highly specialized that a base knowledge of chemistry or English literature provides little more than bits of trivia for cocktail parties. It will do me no good in my historical research to know about calculus, and no scientist needs to understand the use of alliteration in Old English poetry in order to cure cancer.
The European university system, however, takes the other extreme, completely eliminating the concept of general education courses in favor of beginning highly specialized training in the students’ specific fields from the moment they take their first classes. But while this system does away with the classes that seem unnecessary to the study of a particular field, it locks its students into their chosen disciplines with little room for exploration. It eliminates the problem that is growing in American colleges, namely that many students waste their college education “finding themselves” and achieving little of note, but the European system fails to address the interconnectivity of all disciplines. An education that puts blinders on its students to force them only to pay attention to the workings of their field will ultimately fail, because nothing in our world is completely self-sufficient.
Of course, not every general education course proves beneficial to every student. Never again in my life will I have to differentiate a sedimentary rock from an igneous rock, unless I am incredibly bored on a hike through the Smokies. But I did not emerge from my semester of “Rocks for Jocks” with no applicable information. In fact, the discussions about Darwin and his contribution to geology from his work with fossils gave me an entirely new perspective on how controversial Darwin actually was in his day.
Talking about Darwin in the context of a science class reveals aspects of his work that a purely historical study would not; and comparing his work to the work of his predecessors demonstrates how science in the latter half of the 19th century was in a state of flux, when the more conservative scientists who were so focused on orders and hierarchies had to suddenly deal with a concept like evolution that threw all previously conceived notions of biology and genetics out the window. Had I not been required to sit through a Geology 101 lecture every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, this understanding of Darwin’s legacy in Victorian-era science would have never occurred to me.
Students often either have it in their heads that general education requirements are a way for the university to claim that their students know everything, or firmly believe that it serves as the equivalent of a primitive torture device. But I would encourage all students, both here at UT and across the nation, to consider their general education classes as a way to find the connectivity between all subjects and disciplines. It is an eye-opening experience to realize that your field is related to and often dependent upon another, and that is the real task of a quality educational system.
— Sarah is a junior in history. She can be reached at srusse22@utk.edu.
