1000 words, typed in Times New Roman 12 font, double spaced, including an MLA heading and original title.

Questioning Our Education.

This unit has been focused on the way education looks currently and the ways that it can or should look. We have heard several voices critiquing the limits of education as well as exposing the possible ideals for specific groups of people. The goal of many of these readings has been to have liberal arts style critical thinking and learning expand beyond the classroom and into what Jon Spayde calls "slow learning" (68) and away from what David Foster Wallace dubs "my natural default setting" (205); it is a movement towards "a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness" (209). This idea refers to ways of teaching that moves learning out from the classroom and into all aspects of a person's life. Other voices have focused more on the philosophy of the university and how it can be best used to leverage the knowledge of students.

For our first short essay you should take a critical look at the practices of education by exploring the current usefulness of the liberal arts education that so many of our authors have endorsed. Does this need for well-rounded education apply to 2015 or have school practices, gender / racial standards, job markets, or other factors changed to the point that liberal arts education is outdated? This essay should look at your philosophy of learning and the role of education by considering how your past and current experiences as well as future plans have encouraged or disproved a need for liberal arts style self-education.

Be specific in your ideas and feel free to incorporate your personal experiences with your ideas. Be sure to make AT LEAST ONE reference outside of the quotes above to an article we have read, making specific citation to author and page number as I have above.

The goal of this essay is to translate our discussion into an organized and original thought about the broad subject of education. I do not expect you to have all the answers or to solve education's many problems, but I encourage you to look critically at the way you are being educated and try to formulate some idea about the way this process should look for you as an individual. Above all, write with zest and gusto, being as creative and original as possible and attempting to join the conversation we have been looking into.