Are you educated?

The question, "what is an educated person?" Came up in class today, and I don't think that I agreed with my teacher's perspective on the topic. In class, the teacher drew two parallel lines on the white board and called it a road. He said that this road was our path of learning, and unless we goes outside of that path to learn new things; we are not considered to be educated people.

I disagree. I think that college is a season of life in which we take classes specific to our future vocations. This teacher of mine said that he believes that we need to go outside of our majors to learn many different trades instead of just one. My argument to that was that during this season of life we should be focusing on of specific majors, and any extra study should be done after/outside of college. I think it's ok to do independant study while you're in school, but when it interferes with your end goal it isn't necessary. I believe that someone can start a major in business at a big university, only talk to people in his/her department, graduate, and even though this person didn't study anything outside their major; they can be considered educated.

I stated in the previous paragraph that I believe that extra study should be saved for after/outside of college. I absolutely believe that even a college graduate can be considered uneducated if they discontinue their studies after they finish college. There are so many things that as adults we need to know beyond what college teaches us, and I think that if we quit studying after we finish college that we are just wasting the vast majority of our lives. The typical college student graduates with their bachelors degree between the ages of 21-23 years old. The average human lives to be 65-70 years old. So, if a person we're to quit studying at the age of 23 imagine how uneducated they would be compared to what they have the potential to be.

So, basically, my point is that I beieve that just because someone doesn't study a bunch of different topics in college; doesn't mean that they are uneducated. I believe that it is important to pursue further education after college whether it is in the form of getting another degree, or if it is just reading the newspaper every day. I believe that forcing students to take classes that have nothing to do with thier majors is wrong, and I believe that liberal arts colleges who believe in that structure of education set their students up to fail. They keep their students in school longer than they should be in school because, their students are not taking the classes that they need to graduate. The teacher who suggested this liberal arts idea to me is one of the administrative staff who makes a lot of decisions for our school, and I feel like the school I go to is failing because of this liberal arts mindset that they unknowingly practice. Students here do not typically graduate on time, and it's becuase the ones who are not ministry majors have to take a load of classes that have nothing to do with their specific majors. I have suffered because of this, and I feel really bad for any student who has to go through the same struggles that I've had at this school. I am looking forward to transfering in the next couple months, and I am definitly excited about getting a real education. I just hope that I'm not too far behind because of this school.

~Matt~