Both Ronald Barnett and Martha Nussbaum agree that the United States’ university system focuses primarily on the student’s ability to question ideas and to think critically in the modern world. The way in which they explain their views differs in the sense that Barnett focuses on the thoughts and feelings that a student may encounter, whereas Nussbaum’s passage was very matter-of-fact and informative. Their messages are both well structured and I feel that they each truly reflect the U.S. university system.
The excerpt from Ronald Barnett’s The Idea of Higher Education reflects on the feelings and mental mindset that a student may have when traversing the university system in the United States. He begins by stating that “a genuine higher learning is subversive in the sense of subverting the student’s taken-for-granted world.” This one sentence gives tremendous insight on Barnett’s view on higher education. He believes that it is a process that is often unsettling to the student, but over time forces he or she to question all answers and leaves the mind to perpetually search for the truth behind all things. Barnett even states that “a genuine higher education is unsettling [and that] it is not meant to be a cozy experience.” Barnett’s ideas can be related to Martha Nussbaum’s in several instances. Both Nussbaum and Barnett agree that the U.S. system challenges the mind to, in Nussbaum’s words, “become active, competent, and thoughtfully critical in a complex world.” They also both agree that the United States’ university system encourages students to question all answers. The one way that my ideas on education in the United States does not line up with these passages, specifically Mr. Barnett, is that I do believe that there are final answers. Barnett states that “no matter how much effort is put in, or how much library research, there are no final answers.” I feel that this may apply to gray areas in philosophical questions or pseudo-scientific studies, but there are many, many “facts” that can easily be proven.
In my experience, college education has been a vastly different experience than formal education in the sense that college challenges me to dig up the foundation of questions to better understand the concepts, rather than having a teacher attempt to drill information in the form of facts and formulas into my head. Even though I have only been at the University of New England for one semester, the differences are clear to me. I feel that one major difference between universities and high schools is the caliber of students that study in the institutions. In high school, an entire class could be held up for a minority of students that have trouble grasping concepts in a timely manner. This changes in college though, since the class’s pace is set by the amount of material to cover, not how quickly the slowest student can learn. My belief is that this effectively “weeds out” students and allows a free society to fill job positions based on merit rather than a bureaucracy appointing citizens to their places. I believe that this freedom of opportunity based on merit has had an active effect in making western society as a whole the major source of all technological, philosophical, and social advancements throughout most of modern history.
Overall, these passages made me think about my education, both past and future, and how they have shaped me to be who I am today. I feel that your education is what you make of it, and that the liberal arts style of education has benefitted many students by making them question all answers and challenge all ideas.
