Portia is exactly what it will teach

Portia is exactly what it will teach

Portia Marks Heather Cole Reading 115 1 December 2010 What Does It Mean To Be “College Educated? ” According to Dictionary. com the words college means: degree-granting school of higher learning; education: act or process of imparting or gaining knowledge, judgment, and a level of intellectual maturity (or) act or process of imparting or acquiring particular knowledge or skills, as for a profession. It’s only right to say that the definition of being college educated is gaining knowledge or skills from a degree-granting school of higher learning.

Should you attend a school and learn liberal arts as well as courses formed around your aspiring career field or jump right into it and go to a vocational school where they will teach you the tricks of the trade? Before I started this Reading 115 course, I didn’t think much about the difference between studying liberal arts versus vocational training. The only thing I knew about vocational training is that most of them weren’t accredited (meaning, the credits from the vocational school wouldn’t count at a university).I also had an unpleasant experience at a vocational school. But vocational training isn’t for everyone, the same goes for liberal arts. Who would be the type of person that picks liberal arts? I think it’s the type of person who has a general passion for learning. Not just one thing but a plethora of things. In Mark Jackson’s, “The Liberal Arts: A Practical View”, he stated “a liberal arts education is valuable to students because it helps to develop their analytical-thinking skills and writing skills” and “thinking skills that are critical for success” (YAH p.

07,208). If this the mission of a liberal education, why doesn’t everyone want this? In Earnest Boyer’s “Specialization: The Enriched Major” he expressed that “general education is an irritating interruption – and annoying detour on their way to their degree” (YAH p 217). If anyone thought that general education was an annoyance, why not skip it all and go for the money shot? Vocational training will inevitably get you ready for the working world, but that is exactly what it will teach you to do; work.

Going ack to the “Maximum Security Education” reading, inmate Joe Bergamini conjectured that “vocational training will teach you how to do something, to have a job, but it doesn’t teach you how to think. ’’ I may be being a little bias, but who wouldn’t want to learn how to think? If more of us knew how to think instead of react, this country would be better off. (more leaders, not as many in prison) Add topic sentence announcing what this paragraph’s main point will be & try to connect the previous paragraph to it. I thought that Mortimer J.

Adler’s General Education vs. Vocational Education was such a strong piece. How Adler described the ancient Greek’s views on education, they believed that training for a specific job was basically slave mentality. If you didn’t have a liberal education you were not a “free man. ” You were a slave to your career because that is all you have been trained to do. In the article Adler quoted Adam Smith, an English economist. Smith asserted that you “become as stupid an ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become.

(how lib arts teaches you to think differently==try to give a specific example or 2: “On the Uses” article—What would Socrates do? So a lib arts ed gives you guidance from other people’s experience by reading their stories (like the guy asking WW Socrates do? ) Getting knowledge from different sources—see an issue from different aspects, different ways of knowing (broaden your perspective) take my time on things; time management; how to live– Although I wouldn’t want to be thought as ignorant in anyone’s point of view, I do understand the need to go to a vocational school.Being a single mother I know the need for stability. Sometimes you need to take short cuts to get the best results for your family.

I came to school because I want to live a purposeful fulfilling life. I like to learn. It feels good to me when my child can ask me a question that would throw some people off track, and come back with proven facts that I have learned or personally experienced. Reading 115 has just reinforced the reason why liberal arts are for me.

I wish everyone had the same opportunity that my classmates and I have been given.