When education gets in the way of your learning

The following is the longer version of my article that was published in Point Loma Nazarene University's publication. Because my own blog is not constrained to a 500 word limit, I wanted to publish the original version and original title. As always, thoughts and rebuttals are always appreciated. :)

Let me preface this editorial by saying I love school and I love Point Loma even more. Come May, I will be leaving a better, more matured, and ridiculously blessed person. Yet, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22 and feeling seriously burnt out. While senioritis is undeniably lurking around the corner, I feel my learning has been inhibited by the overwhelming number of general education requirements we are required to fulfill before we can make the long awaited stride across the Greek Theater.

I cannot help but think there is something seriously wrong when as a Political Science major I only have one major related class per semester while the rest of my semester is jam packed with general education classes. Don’t get me wrong, I value the liberal arts approach and believe the argument that taking various classes makes us better, well rounded, young people. But when I spend the majority of my time calculating the gravitational pull of the moon and literary structure of 1800 Midwest folk story structure far more than the major my diploma will have printed on it, I can’t help but think there is something wrong with our education system.  

All liberal arts colleges have general education requirements but in my research of comparable Christian colleges, I have found that PLNU tends to require more units of GE classes and is less lenient in allowing classes taken at other colleges or high school to count for graduation requirements. For example, Westmont College in Santa Barbara no longer has a math requirement as long as you pass the math competency exam and Seattle Pacific University allows certain AP classes to fulfill some GE requirements even without taking the AP exam. By decreasing the amount of GE requirements, or rewarding students for careful planning and hard work in high school, we would be able to take more major related classes. After all, once we graduate and apply for jobs, there is an understanding that we are qualified to work the major printed on our diplomas. As a political science major, I don’t think my employer will care how many hours of physical fitness I completed or frogs I dissected but I do think they will care about how well educated I am in my field.

If the point of college is to be prepared for our respective fields and majors, wouldn’t it make sense to devote the most time to major related classes? As this semester comes to an end, I am frustrated I won’t be able to end my undergraduate education fully immersed in the study of public policy, international relations and political theory because I am constrained by the “to be completed units” lingering on my advising guide.

So, I don’t know about you and you might not be feeling 22, but I’m sure that you hate it when education gets in the way of your learning too.