What Education Teaches

Many of our children and those of our friends and colleagues are about to graduate from high school and are contemplating or preparing for college in the fall. As an educator and someone who believes in the value of the education process, it may be a valuable exercise to contemplate the reasons why we go to college. To be sure, the curriculum presented and integrated are germane to our careers, some more so than others. If you're going to be an engineer or physician, the fundamental courses are critical prerequisites to the more complicated and challenging curricula to follow.

However, for the masses who are uncertain about why they're there or what undergraduate studies have to do with life, I offer a few observations. In many cases, the coursework is secondary to the process of pursuing and achieving a degree and I would suggest that these are much more profound lessons that the coursework itself. As an example, I remember the big picture with regard to English and American literature but not the specifics. The lessons of self-discipline and focus remain while the characters in Dickens and Hemingway are no longer close to the surface.

In all the areas that matter, the lessons learned concern getting up every morning for classes, irrespective of the indulgences from the night before. When everyone around you is going out partying, it has to do with staying in the dorm room or apartment to write a paper.

If you are told that a quiz only counts for ten percent of your grade, the lesson is derived from taking it no matter what. Staying up late to study or write a paper is tough. But so is life.

Taking a variety of courses that have nothing to do with your major appears to be superfluous. But so is sitting in a board meeting with a collection of bravado-stuffed executives. You would never refuse to attend the board meeting and if you were paying attention to the quizzes, you would know why you're able to sit through endless agenda items in the corporate environment.

Tenacity is the lesson, not Chaucer. Embracing a body of information, integrating it and learning how to restructure and present it is the exercise. Patience is the outcome - if we are patient with the math and science courses that are incidental to social work case studies, patience for the rest of life ensues.

Many of our educators never bother with the lesson beneath the lesson. While conjugating verbs in a foreign language, the value of which is eternally questionable, the message of repeating information until it is incorporated is seldom expressed. This is a shame. Is it somehow disrespectful to our disciplines to speak of life learning rather than the intrinsic value of the knowledge itself? I suspect so, especially if you've ever conversed with some of our learned but otherwise socially detached experts, lost eternally in esoteric neverneverland.

And so I gently request that a short conversation about the purpose of college education is well deserved. If you embrace each course with the same intensity and concentration, the practice of doing so becomes familiar and comfortable. If you keep your mind open to the possibility of learning something important within the context of that which appears to be irrelevant, something magical may very well happen.

All of the knowledge of education is significant, inside and outside the classroom. Understand that it is practice for the real world, whether it be within or outside of the stated discipline. On a frequent basis, I encounter those who began along a certain path and wound up at a wholly different destination, as a direct result of education acquired solely in undergraduate studies that were required, accidental or incidental to the major field of study.

The alternative to an open mind is the certainty that no growth will occur. Those who have pursued employment without a degree can easily attest to its value. Those of us who didn't learn the bigger lessons of the degree will have greater challenges to overcome.