Yesterday I met with my advisor to do some long-term planning and as we all know one of the necessary evils of general education is English 202, unless you are studying English in which case they esteem that you do enough writing. I asked my advisor why students have to take English 202. She said that it is a course required of all majors to force students to write. I pointed out that the International Development option of the CED major is writing intensive not to mention that I do a fair amount of writing for my French classes and for PLA so I feel like I get and will be getting my fair share of writing in the next 3 years. I feel that the time and energy that I would put into English 202 could be much better spent on something I am actually interested in, something I wouldn’t be forced to take.
I read an opinion piece in the Daily Collegian not too long ago that pointed out that our General Education System at Penn State is a broken one. He pointed out that while the goal of Gen Eds is to give students a more well-rounded education students end up taking the easiest courses they can find just to fulfill the requirement and then blow them off. Here is an example. I need an art credit in order to graduate. I think it would be really fun to take Introduction to Drawing because I have always wanted to learn how to draw. However, I do not have the studio time in my schedule to dedicate to such a class, so instead I signed up for Intro to Graphic Design, which is online and seems like the easiest option but I am not really interested in the history of graphic design.
I am not writing this to rant about General Education. I actually really like the concept. I want to learn about art, science and other cultures. I think that students should have a well-rounded education but should it be forced upon us? I don’t think we should get rid of gen-eds all together but I think students should be able to take the classes that they are interested in. Going back to my art credit. I would be really interested to take a course in E-Design but that wouldn’t count as an art credit and so I don’t really have time in my three-year plan for it. Instead I am going to be bored learning the history of graphic design because it is “approved” as an art credit.
We somehow need to come up with a system that allows students to take courses outside their major that interest them and then find a way to make that count towards gen eds. Why shouldn’t E Design count as an art? Who is to decide what is art and what is not?