A New College

  In class on Tuesday we received an article titled, Why we have college by Louis Menand of The New Yorker. I myself do not read magazines often, yet this was an unique article about why we need college and its purpose. Menand mentioned two different theories about college, 1 and 2. Theory 1 took an extrinsic take, where Motivation 2.0 prevailed with grades and a sorting process of achievement. Theory 2 was fueled with intrinsic motivation, Motivation 3.0, and a need for democracy. What really stuck with me in this article didn't come up until page 7 when Menand mentions,

" the system has become too big and too heterogeneous to work equally well for all who are in it. "

  This reminded me of one day in my biomaterials class when we had an open discussion about the educational system. We were given the prompt of if we could change the system in any way or form, how would we. One of the most unique ways that we talked about was a class where we had the option of how we wanted to learn the class. For a single class you could pick how you wanted to hear the material: in a lecture, through a lab, or a hands on activity. Of course some classes would be harder to offer in a lab version, yet the overall concensus was that everybody learns different and confining someone to a particular learning modality isn't the best. We also agreed that college should decrease its focus on grades and try to make majors and minors with more interdisciplinary with concentrations.
 Some schools are already trying to change how the entire concept of the classroom experience. Our professor mentioned how our biotransport class next semester may be taught in one of these new learning styles. The professor would post the lecture online the night before and it would be the students job to listen and take notes. This way, class would be more of a review session of any questions we had about the lecture and homework problems. I am hesitant, yet very intrigued about how this class will be next year.
  Nevertheless, I highly believe that the educational system should be changed. Yet, it is also my responsibility to keep up to date with the current system until it is finally changed. I know for myself, I had a difficult time learning to read. My mother made me switch schools because my first grade teacher was teaching whole words instead of phonetics. It was her first year teaching school, yet there are several children like myself who may learn differently yet do not have parents as active enough to make sure they get the help they need. Teaching is a very difficult profession and in some instances it ends up in babysitting the child for six hours a day. I only hope that education eventually gets the attention it needs.