College Uneducation Essay

I lack to announce on College Uneducation. Is it possible that our college educationwhitethorn uneducate rather than educate? I repartee Yes. It is a paradox but n atomic number 53theless the truththe grim, unmerciful truth. We altogether believe in higher education else we should not be in the University. At the same time, college educationlike all other forgiving devices for hu composition bettermentmay build or destroy, lead, or mislead.My decade years humble service in the University of the Philippines has afforded me an opportunity to watch the veritable of ideals and practices of our student body. In some aspects of higher education, most of our students arrive mensural up to their high responsibilities. But in other featuresalas, vital onesthe thoughts and actions of umteen of them tend to stunt the read/write head, dry up the heart, and quench the soul. These students are be uneducated in college. I shall briefly discussthree ways in which galore(postnominal) of o ur students are getting college uneducation, for which they pay tuition fees and make unnumbered sacrifices. obligate WorshipIn the first place, there is the all but mad worship of the printed page. What does the book say? is, by all odds, the most valuable question in the students mind whenever he is set about with any problem calling for his own debate. By the same token, may students feel a sort of frenzy for facts till these run as huge as the mountains and the mind is crushed under them. Those students hypothesize of null but how to accumulate data hence, their capacity for clear and powerful thought process is paralyzed. How pathetic to hear them argue and discuss Because they lack the native free energy of unhampered reason, their discourse smacks of cant and sophistry rather than of healthy reasoning and straight thinking.It is thus that some of our students surrender their individuality to the textbook and retire their birthrightwhich is to think for themselves. A nd when they attempt to form their own taste, they become pedantic. Unless a student nonpluss the habit of independent and sound reasoning, his collegeeducation is a earnest sham.Compare these hair-splitting college students with Juan de la Cruz in the barrios. Now, Juan de la Cruz has read very brusk no undigested mass of look ating dulls the edge of his inborn logic, his mind is free from the overwhelming, stultifying weight of unassimilated book knowledge. How penetrating his perception, how unerring his judgment, how solid his common sense He contemptuously refers to the learned sophists, thus Lumabis ang karunungan mo, which means, Your learning is besides much.Professional PhilistinismThe second valetner of college uneducation that I want to speak of is this most students make professional efficiency the be-all and end-all of college education. They have set their paddy wagon upon becoming highly trained equityyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, and agriculturists. I shall not stop to question into the question of how much blame should be laid at the brink of the faculties of the University for this pernicious drift toward undue and excessive specialization. That such a tendency exists is undeniable, but we never pause to count, the cost We are all of one mind I believe that college education is nothing unless it widens a mans vision, broadens his sympathies, and leads him to higher thinking and deep feeling. Yet how can we birth a this result from a state of affairs which reduces a law student to a code, a prospective doctor to a prescription, and a would-be engineer to a mathematical formula? How more students in our professional colleges are doing any systematic reading in literary productions? May we not, indeed, seriously ask whether this fetish of specialization does not hamper the inspiring sense of hit and the ennobling kip down of finer things that our students have it in them to unf sure-enough(a) into full-blown magnificenc e.The Jading Dullness of Modern LifeA thing of beauty is a joy forever,says Keats. But we know that beauty us a matter of taste and, unless we develop in us a proper appreciation of what is bewitching and sublime, everything around us is impractical and commonplace. We rise early and go out into, but our spirit is antiphonary to the hopeful quietude and the dew-chastened sweetness of dawn. At night we behold the myriad stars, but they are just so many bright speckstheir mushy fires do not soothe our troubled hearts, and we do not hear that awesome, soul stirring fascination of theimmense ties of Gods universe.We are bathed in the silver sheen of the moon and yet feel not the beatification of the moment. We gaze upon a vista of high mountains, but their silent aptitude has no appeal for us. We read some undying verses still, their vibrant cadency does not thrill us, and their transcendent though is to us like a vision that vanishes. We look at a masterpiece of the chisel with its without end gracefulness of lines and properties, yet to us it is no more than a mere merciful likeness. Tell me, is such a vivification worth coming to college for? Yet, my friends, the overspecialization which many students pursue with zeal and devotion is bound to result in such an unfeeling, dry-as-dust existence.I may say in passing that the education of the honest-to-goodness generation is in this respect far superior to ours. Our older countrymen say, with reason, that the clean education does not lawfully cultivate the heart as the old education did.Misguided ZealLastly, this selfsame rage for highly specialized training, with a view to distinguished professional success, beclouds our vision of the broader perspectives of life. Our ism of life is in danger of becoming narrow and mean because we are habituated to think almost wholly in terms of material wellbeing. Of course we mustiness be practical. We cannot adequately answer this tremendous question unless we thoughtfully develop a proper sense of values and thus learn to complexify the dross from the gold, the chaff from the grain of life.The time to do this task is not after but before college graduation for, when all is said and done, the add and substance of higher education is the individualformulation of what life is for, with special training in some advanced line of human learning in aim that such a life formula may be punish with the utmost effectiveness. But how can we lay down the terms of our philosophy of life if every one of our thoughts is absorbed by the daily assignment, the alfresco reading, and the laboratory experiment, and when we continuously devour lectures and notes?Uneducated Juan de la Cruz as instructorHere, again, many of our students should sit at the feet of meagrely educated Juan de la Cruz and learn wisdom. Ah He is often called ignorant, but he is the wisest of the wise, for he has unravelled the mysteries of life. His is the happiness of the man w ho knows the whys of human existence. Unassuming Juan de la Cruz cherishes no Vaulting ambition which oerleaps itself. His simple and hardy virtues put to shame the studied and complex rules of distribute of highly educated men and women. In adversity, his stoicism is beyond encomium. His love of home, so guilelessly faithful, is the firm appointation of our social structure. And his patriotism has been tested and found true. Can our students learn from Juan de la Cruz, or does their college education unfit them to become his pupils?In conclusion, I shall say that I have observed among many of our students certain alarming signs of college uneducation, and some of these are (1) lack of independent judgment as well as love of pedantry, because of the worship of the printed page and the agitated accumulation of undigested data(2) the deadening of the delicate sense of the beautiful and the sublime, on account of overspecialization and (3) neglect of the formulation of a sound philo sophy of life as a result of excessive emphasis on professional training.