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12:25:00 PM EDT
Hearing Jealousy -- Natalie Merchant
The Value of a Useless Education
Here's a link that's being passed along around the academic corners of the blogosphere: an article by a student at the University of Iowa, writing in her school newspaper about the pointlessness of general education classes. Some excerpts:
The school system needs a reality check; most students aren't going to be mathematicians, historians, or chemists. So why do we have to take these classes? If students know at an early age what they want to do for their careers, then high schools should offer classes in that area. This would make me feel that the time I spent in the high-school classrooms wasn't a waste.
When I got to college, the education system did a better job of focusing on students' career goals. But even then, I found myself stressing over statistical equations and astronomy facts during my first two years. Why? I was never going to use that information. For open majors, the general-education requirements are great. For me, they were a waste of time and tuition.
I shouldn't have to give up my dream of working at Glamour magazine because my GPA was low - all because of some stupid gen-ed classes that I was forced to take. Let's just get rid of them.
Now, as it happens, I'm a great defender of "stupid gen-ed classes" -- particularly for writers. So I wrote to the student who penned this essay, and this is the letter I wrote to her.
Ms. Perk:
I read with some interest your essay "On schooling's useless lessons" and I thought I'd comment to you. As it happens I am both a working author and a journalist: I have seven books out (including one released this week), and have written for magazines, newspapers and online venues for more than 15 years. So I believe I have some practical experience that is relevant to your dream of being a working writer.
If you think that merely doing well in school by focusing on one subject to the exclusion of others is going to be useful to you as a writer, you're probably wrong. This is particularly the case with journalism. Going to J-school will give you the technical tools to write, but if you don't have a wide base of knowledge on a number of subjects, then you are going to be at a severe competitive disadvantage to other writers who do. Writing professionally is a profoundly competitive field, and the writers who do succeed are the writers who can think fast and think deep; which is to say, writers with both a good general education and the ability to utilize it.
This will be important even in the field of fashion journalism (you mention you'd like to write for Glamour magazine). Fashion designers, for one example, pull in ideas from everywhere (if you've ever seen the Issac Mizrahi documentary Unzipped you'd see him designing a collection around an idea derived from a 1940s film), and the writer who can recognize an influence without having to rely on Google -- and then write knowledgeably about it -- is going to get more and better work than the writer who is always a step behind.
You'll need to know the history of the field (the history of fashion is fascinating). You'll need to know mathematics to understand the business end of fashion. If you know chemistry, you can better report on how new cosmetics do what they do. Every "useless" aspect of your education will come into play... if you have the desire to use it to your advantage. Again, rest assured that if you are not willing to use this "useless" knowledge to your advantage, there will be others who will, and those others will get the jobs you want.
Also, consider: What if you *don't* get the job with Glamour? Most writers don't in fact get their dream jobs right out of college. A college friend of mine named David Auburn won himself a Pulitzer Prize a couple of years ago for a play he wrote called Proof (which, incidentally, was about mathematics -- good thing he didn't decide that was useless to him even though he wasn't going to be a mathematician), but one of his first writing gigs, if I remember correctly, was writing information on medicine bottles. If you don't get a fashion journalism job handed to you out of college, having a general field of knowledge to fall back on will make it easier to find that first writing job -- and to start on the way to the writing gig you really want.
I have some experience with this. I went to the University of Chicago, which has no journalism program, but does have a very intense "common core" of classes. The Core has no immediate practical value to the student except to give him or her a good, rounded education, and to teach the student how to learn, which is to say, how to find and evaulate information independently and intelligently.
My first job out of college was as movie critic for a large newspaper in California, and I can tell you that I got that job not because I had taken an exclusive diet of journalism or film classes -- in fact I had taken none -- but because my editor had been impressed with my education *in general* and in my ability (via the writing samples she saw) to pull in information from a great number of places and make it relevant to what I was writing. I got the information and the ability to learn and use more information from my general education; it's still incredibly useful to me today in my writing career.
Given a choice between taking journalism classes or general education classes in college, I'd advise anyone to get a general education first -- you'll learn journalism on the job (and through things like the college newspaper and internships), but outside of college life doesn't offer many opportunities for mass consumption of knowledge. I have a philosophy degree, not an English or journalism degree, and I assure you that the decision to get the one and not the others is one of the better decisions I've made.
In sum: Information is a tool, and the "useless" information you're learning will have far greater application than you think -- again, if you allow it to. The writer who knows more is at a competitive advantage to those who know less. Think about it.
Thoughts?
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YAAAAYYYYYY for you! This poor child needs to learn things!
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When I was in college the first time, I tried to choose courses within the Liberal Arts requirement that suited my interest in writing multimedia sf and fantasy. So I went for English History and history of the Middle Ages, Astronomy and Climatology (which was way too hard forme). I didn't have to take Physics or any sort of math, so I didn't. I really, really regret that now. I've since remedied the math deficiency in going for my accounting degree, but I still feel the need to learn more about physics -- someday. Meawhile, though, I've learned a lot about any number of subjects since my liberal arts days, in books, on tv and online. Perhaps Ms. Perk will eventually do the same.
Karen
http://journals.mavarin.com/mavarin/MusingsfromMavarin/ -
Very nicely written John, but I have to say that I applaud this girl too for voicing her thoughts, though naive and innocent. Many kids do feel this way, even my young third graders sometimes ask, "Why do I need to know this?"
Hopefully, your letter will provide plenty of food for thought and Ms. Perk will consider your very valid and well written points.
I am anxious to hear her comments, but let's not rip her apart for giving her opinion. This could be quite a teachable moment here!
Angie -
OK, who's running the pool on how long it takes her to respond in her blog saying how stupid John is, and he doesn't understand the way things are *now*. I want Tuesday, 3:10 PM.
-Paul
10/23/05 5:42 PM
Bravo! And the thing is the real job in college is to make young people decide waht they think about the world! It's a hard thing to do, develop your own personal philososphy and it's one of he reasons I think US and Canada have a more educated, interesting population than countries where this is not appreciated!
nat