2007年6月13日水曜日

Meiland Essay Final Draft

Kensuke Uematsu                        Uematsu1
Professor James
ARW section AI
13 June 2007


           College Education is Extremely Useful
      Some people argue that college education is completely useless. Is that sure? What do you think? I knew the argument from “Shift Happens”- Karl Fisch and it says that your future job does not exist yet. In addition, half of the things which you learn in the first year will become out-of-date by your third year of college, however, is that exactly true that to say college education is completely useless? The claim of this essay is that a college education is really useful.
      I disagree with the idea that college education is useless because students can learn the way of thinking. There are two main points to explain this idea. To begin with, it’s necessary to know not only how to solve the specific problem but how to think sort of problems. For example, if you know the answer of the particular question, you can answer that question, of course but it is meaningless that you can’t solve other questions which you don’t know previously. By learning the way of thinking, you can solve many questions which you didn’t know. If you know how to think first, you will be able to reach the answer of the question on your own. Next, you have to learn the important attitude or skills in the college. In Meiland’s “College Thinking”, he suggests that “the content is not the main point. Much of the content that you are taught in college will be outmoded or discarded anyway in ten or twenty years. Learning intellectual skills and attitudes is far more important,” (5). To illustrate, it’s not important to remember the answer of the specific problem but you have to remember the way of thinking and the way of acting when you are faced with a difficult problem because the skills which you learned in college will be useful in later life. Therefore, college is useful to learn the way of thinking.
      The second reason is that students can make some groups or organizations which have same purpose of investigating or discussing about the specific topic. Three main points of this idea will be shown. First, students can find the people who have same interest in college easier than outside. There are many clubs or associations in college and most of them are a little persistent so they may recruit you to their club actively in first month of your college life. Sometimes, there are too much information and invitation but it’s also very useful to find the club which you are interested in and know details of the club because information comes in without your intention. Next, if you join a club, it will be useful in the future. To illustrate, after you graduated the college, it’s difficult to get the information of the things which you are interested in because you may become busy and the information won’t come in automatically, however, you can get the notice of the specific topic easily by using your group network. Finally, by making the group of specific topic, you can learn more about the topic. To demonstrate, when you discuss about some topics in the group, you can know the argument which your friends have and it will become your new knowledge and also, you can examine your opinion about the topic by discussing with your friends who know the topic well. According to Meiland, he maintains that “By investigating reasons for our beliefs, we come to understand them better,” (18) so it’s necessary to inspect your reasons to understand the thing better and the group of the specific topic gives you a lot of chances for having technical discussion. Consequently, college is useful to make a group which is about particular topic.
      Some people argue that college is useless because students will lose their motivation to study. Two main points are argued to support this opinion. To begin with, if students know that the topic which they are studying become out-of-date after two years, they will lose their motivation to study that topic. The study without motivation is really meaningless. Some knowledge which you learned with no motivation is lost in a few weeks or a couple of days. Next, you will have to learn something which you are not interested in. To illustrate, you have to take some compulsory subjects to graduate college regardless of your mind. You will be able to study hard about the thing which you are interested in but you will be not able to study hard about the thing which you are not interested in which is just need for graduation. It’s also meaningless and you can’t remember so long. All of these points, studying without motivation make college useless.
      I stresses that a college education is extremely useful because we can learn the way of thinking and we can make some groups of the people who have same interest about the specific topic in college but some people say that college education is useless because students will lose their motivation to study. It is the most important thing to know the college education is not only for studying about specific problems but for studying the attitude or skills. In addition, college is not just a place for studying but it is a place that people can make good friends and they can enjoy their hobby. All of these reasons, people who argue that college is useless have to think about these points and they may think that college education is exactly useful.
                                   (921 words)



                Works Cited
Meiland, Jack W. College Thinking: How to Get the Best Out of College. New York: New American Library, 1981. (The ELP Reader, 2006. 3-24).
Karl, Fisch. “Shift Happens”. ARW Educational Values. 21 May 2007. <http://edvalues.blogspot.com/2007/05/essay-text-shift-happens-what-is.html.>

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