Being Too 'Well Rounded'?
 

since i started going to school to the time i graduated, people have been telling me to get a well-rounded education and be a good well rounded person. I understand that being so focused in a study that i become ignorant to all others would suck, so for some reason people pushed "well rounded" down my throat until i was convinced that it was better to be pretty good at alot of things rather than great at one thing

fuck. that.

i think that these days, people are becoming too well rounded for their own good and that all of the general studies are making potentially sharp students into "well rounded" joes who always had a knack for something, but never had it developed. i kind of want our education system to grade for different types of "smart" after elementary school so that students can track into what they're good at. for example: why should i study physics if i'm an english major?

What does TFP think? Is the current educational diversification practical? Should we have some program similar to the honors system in middle school? Discuss...

A few decades after the fact, it seems that some of the "general ed" classes were among the most important. I hated speech and english classes. Go figure, it doesn't matter how good your ideas and tech skills are if can't communicate them clearly. Statistics was incredibly dry; but it's useful to understand how numbers are presented. Hell, you need a class or two in organic chemistry, just to read a food label, these days.

You'll pick up the majority of your main skillset on the job, anyway. The degree just proves you are trainable.

I'm speaking as an uneducated heathen here, but I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Let's say you really love widgets and want to know all there is to know about them. Fine, great. What's to stop you from picking up a bit about doodads along the way?

I'm a systems administrator by trade, if not currently by title. That's what I do, and I'm pretty good at it. I also play a decent guitar, am reasonably well read, have a basic understanding of math and physics, understand politics at least here in Canada and even know a few fun facts about history. I'm no expert at most of these things, but I strive for knowing enough to be able to carry my half of a conversation without looking like an idiot. I'm usually successful, and did it without the benefits or resources that a typical college or university provides. What's holding you back?

Go learn more. What else are you going to do with your time? Sit in front of the TV, or play video games?

Fuck. That.

I should have gotten into one of the trades.

I spend a lot of time hanging out with teachers (my wife is one and most of our friends are as well). I have also been in the position to hire people in my current role. The important thing for people to learn in school these days is how to learn. Learning how to learn gives you a leg up in a world where jobs are constantly shifting and skill sets learned last year are now obsolete. In order to succeed today, people need to be able to adapt to change.

This is true whether you are an engineer, a data processing clerk or a nurse.

I am also of the opinion that focusing too much on any one thing is going to limit you. Yes, you will become an expert in that one field but you will may not have the ability to put what you do into a larger context.

I did film studies as my major (it's like English Literature but with films) but I took a bunch of courses in Philosophy, Art, Religion, Women's Studies, etc. I am now running the programming department at a TV Channel. Nothing I studied specifically lead me here. I studied what interested me and did extra curricular things that interested me (Campus Radio, Photography Club, Theatre club, etc.). It gave me a foundation on which I could build a career.

I was suggesting that people at an early age should be educated towards their strengths. people should definitely learn a little bit about alot of things, but i'm arguing that people should be really really good at one thing (but not to the point of ignorance) rather than mediocre at many things.

I doubt i'll ever need to know Avagadro's number outside of a chem class, I'll never care about the induced current in a wire due to a magnet. To me the important classes that should be taught to everyone before highschool are essay writing/research, algebra, trig, Newtonian physics, world history/government, art, and economics. Then in highschool, depending on individual interest and aptitude, you can track to something that you're good at and that you enjoy rather than 4 more years of really dull and unnecessarily generalized classes.

It's always been my impression that the purpose of general education isn't to burden you with "crap you'll never use," it's to help you explore facets of your fancy (sports, electronics, language, law, etc.) from a new perspective. World history and English aren't stressed nearly enough in the US.

I want to be MacGyver's MacGyver.

Some of the best courses I took were interdisciplinary in nature. I took a course called Perspectives in Nazism that was not, strictly speaking, a history course. We approached the topic through, yes, history, but also art, music, film, literature, architecture, etc.

I felt the course gave a lot more insight into Nazi Germany than any straight up history course I'd ever taken. Moreover, it presented a model of learning that I truly enjoyed.

Again, too much focus on one thing can be a bad thing. Yes, become proficient at something but keep looking around. Keep your interests broad. What you do beyond your specialty brings a new perspective. It's these sorts of things that I look for when I am digging through a mound of resumes.

There is a VERY large part of your life that takes place outside of your "job", and an awful lot of your "job" that doesn't involve your specific knowledge of your official function. If you can't fill that social part of your life (and work) with intelligent, interesting conversation/interaction, you're going to be very lonely. Rounding is the part of your education designed to give you a glimpse of what the rest of the world is doing/interested in, so that you may find some mutual interests with others. Don't knock it. Very few successful people are NOT well rounded. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates' financial hero, turned him onto bridge, then philanthropy. Not exactly in keeping with their first love of making billions.

Ask yourself:

Was John Rambo too well-rounded?

SEE: First Blood novel for reference.

no, teasle was rounded...

http://i.min.us/inzAtI.jpg

I think college is the age where you begin to specialize in one topic--giving you basic knowledge in your career choice. I remember how little I knew as a High School Freshman, and, how much physics helps me understand things like parallax, or how basic math helps me figure out things in land nav or calculating mils.

You're right in that being a jack of all trades won't get you very far, unless you're super smart and end up going to Harvard Law (my buddy, an AFA grad got a 174 on the LSAT without trying). However, I think the current system of specializing in College helps.

Let me point out two flaws in the premise of this discussion:

1- Specializing in your strengths is great. But you won't find out what your strengths are until you try out several things. Hence the value of a well rounded education early on.

2- If early on education is more well rounded, nowadays starting in high school people are put in specific tracks. That is, if people value a well rounded education more nowadays, it is simply because it is much rarer. Starting in high school students are picking AP classes to start to specialize in certain areas. At the college and post graduate level, then, things are ultra specialized. I have a PhD, but I am as ignorant as anyone about many parts of my specific discipline because my training was so specialized.

Man, if I hadn't received and hadn't pursued such a well-rounded education, I seriously doubt I would be as awesome at my job as I am. When you are surrounded by 3-year-olds asking, "What's that? Why?" being able to explain to them precisely why, and in a way they can understand, is incredibly valuable.

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My own history tutor focused on Nazi sex camps, and also covered the cost of a shag in Russia during the revolution. We did want to get him a dominatrix kissogram on the last day of term - but someone grassed us up. Sad.
Education teaches you how to learn. Perhaps too much is left to the schools that should be taught at home. We heard on news a couple of weeks ago, that children start school unable to use a knife and fork. The teacher interviewed explained that they start them off with a spoon! To my thinking, thats valuable teaching time - childrens parents should have already taught them to eat with more than their mitts. The well rounded education should idealy happen at home. Invite your child to help you change the brake pads, paper a room, garden - those are the gifts of time and experience that they will remember and use after your death, the information that is passed from generation to generation - and will help save them getting ripped off in life - you teach them about relationships, geneology politics - in the same way. You equip them to be able to find out stuff for themselves, to investigate FACTS and to draw their own conclusions.

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i never thought the day would come... but chinese i completely agree with ^^this^^

i'm a little confused about the premise of the thread.

how can knowing more rather than less be a bad thing?

students are tracked already based on often quite crude measurements from elementary school forward. what would the point be of more of that?


i don't think the op states the main problems at all. in my experience teaching at universities, students come out of high school in general largely unprepared intellectually and in terms of some basic skill-sets for university work. for example, most cannot write an analytic paper. most have not been taught basic critical thinking skills. and it's not that the kids are stupid---not by a long shot---they just have to get walked through the transition away from the relatively low-level expectations of high school.

this is compounded by the absurd idea that 18 year old kids should be in university at all, when the fact is that most don't have a clue what they want or who they are. **the** dominant story i got from undergrads i kept in contact with is that one or another day, usually some time in their junior year, they woke up, hung over, and realized that they had to major in something.

so i think the underlying problems are two-fold:

1. high schools (and before) do not demand enough of the students. they do not in the main teach the basic skills required for university work---instead they teach the ridiculous tests mandated by no child left behind and other such nonsense.

2, there really should be some kind of non-military national service that kids go do at the age of 18-19. something that gets them away from school-as-normal idea and gives them a chance to think a bit about what they might want. and god knows there's a lot of things that they could be turned loose on, much of which would probably do a lot of good. all that'd be required is for---say----the national security state to be dismantled and military expenditures knocked down from their present levels of eating about a third (or more) of total federal outlays (depending on how you estimate the costs of both unnecessary wars and the maybe third in libya). but i digress.

i think starting university at 20-21 would be an excellent modification.

o yeah--and university should be free. but that's another story.

oops i guess i should've throught it through more before posting. i meant the premise to be something like this: say you have two hours of class a day. i would rather use both of those hours to get a formal education on something that i'm good at/like doing rather than one hour in that class and one hour in another class that i have no interest in.

because they're crude requirements and should be made better rather than left to fester

dont you think this comes from a lack of willing teachers? if someone decides that teaching is the route they want to take and and they track into it, they'd teach necessary essentials common to any technical trade.

i agree we spend alot on our military but considering how much and the value of what we have to protect, its worth it.
/threadjack

Spot on. I'm a part-time tutor and I get the same questions from my kids. If I college courses weren't as diverse as they were, I would have a really hard time explaining to them why Dr. Seuss was so damn awesome, or give them a 30-second explanation of what evolution is.

Plus I at least know what people are talking about even if I couldn't engage in an in depth conversation with them about their topic of interest.

i think the problem with high schools at this point is that they teach standardized tests. teachers have their hands tied by stupid, largely conservative-inspired, requirements, one effect of which is to force teachers to present ideological statements as matters of fact because the tests require they be handled in a particular way.

so no, it's not a problem with teachers. it's a problem with conservative educational policy being directed at preventing too much of this critical thinking stuff from getting out into the world. i don't really understand what it is about thinking for oneself that scares the right. ok, well i do, but it's a threadjack.

i don't buy the idea that tracking is going to resolve anything---unless by it you are advocating something on the order of the english system. but that makes no sense unless university education is free---or tuitions are kept flat---which i'm cool with, btw---because the function of the a-levels is to allocate university places.

but that's an entirely different type of standardized testing than the idiocy of no child left behind. those tests refer back to the high schools themselves. a-levels refer to university placement. geared differently.

I had this problem in college just like the OP. I graduated college and spent about 40% of my time on classwork related to my major. I spent 1% coming up with my own ideas for projects or doing research 'for fun', 59% was spent on stuff I should have done in high school or stuff most people in my field don't use (Calculus 2 & 3...). When I got my first job, the homeschooled guy (who was teaching me what he did because he was moving and I was replacing him), was about 10 years ahead of me.

Now, maybe we need to have 'technical colleges' that will teach these skills that you go to before or after graduating from a typical college like Med School or Law School...

And while I did exercise enough while at college, I think gym class is a very important class in HS and college compared to memorizing facts and performing plays. So, not all non-related classes are useless, but it should be a 65% (major), 10%(self-study or group project), 25%(other disciplines) mixture.

I agree with this. I should never of gone to college at 18. Even if I took a year off to prepare, earn some spending money, and get organized, I would have had a much better experience.

I think that people should focus a specific area of study and then later continue their education through avenues, such as continuing education to become well rounded.

I was going to post a bunch of my opinions about this, but Good Lord, I can't imagine saying them any better than roachboy did. Well said, sir!! Concise, accurate, and perspicacious!

I specialized early in college and then my field dried up and disappeared. Then I bounced around for a while and now I am back in school.


The problem with specializing or focusing in in area of study is that it makes for an inflexible work force. And if you start letting young kids focus on one thing or another they may completely miss a different subject that they would have been great at. I think graduate school is where you should start to specialize. There's no reason you can't take undergrad classes in a specific field but I don't think that should be all you do

In summary, specializing your education can make you exceptional at one area but it is only one area and the most successful people tend to be great at a lot of things.

Cadre, your example is just what I was getting at with my point about learning to learn. In order to succeed these days one needs to be able to adapt to change.

This is true. I think there is an art to learning something that you despise.