Title In Progress

A couple days ago, I was driving in the car with my mother as we passed the old neighborhood we used to live in, in Northeast Philadelphia. As we drove we reminisced about my old elementary school that I attended for 3 years before ultimately moving to a more affluent suburb. She maintains that the education I got there was more impressive than the one I received at my newer school, and so on. We got to talking about the high school I would have attended had we remained there, and she brought something up that gave me some mixed emotions.

According to my mother, a short while after we left the neighborhood the local high school started to become less and less prestigious/rigorous and more people began to send their kids to other schools. When I inquired as to why this happened so suddenly, she told me that at some point, the county began bussing in students from lower-income districts so that they could enjoy the privileges offered at that school rather than being confined to a high school that can’t suit their potential. The largest obvious change that immediately occurred was an in increase in violence and a decrease in performance on tests. This gave the school a worse reputation and many of the local families were angry at the situation that they couldn’t avoid.

When I asked my mother her perspective and whether or not she truly believed that it was an unjustified imposition on the school she said:

“If I was the mother of a child who got to attend such a great high school, I would be so ecstatic for my child. But I can’t deny that had I been a mother of a local student, my heart would hurt to see such a good school go downhill so fast and with my child in it”.

This begged the question of whether or not it’s wrong to force student body cohesiveness at the expense of certain students, while it’s clearly a benefit to others who are in need…

Personally, I don’t know what the answer is to that kind of problem. In a perfect world, there would be enough money to fund both schools with enthusiastic and intelligent teachers so that everyone has the chance to succeed. But clearly that’s not where we live. Is it fair to force kids to sacrifice class time so that others have a chance to succeed? Or is it fair that some kids’ parents simply don’t have the financial means to live near such an impressive school? Both sides of the coin are poor circumstances and I don’t think I can make my mind up yet regarding what the perfect solution should be.

1) The goal of making improvements to General Education is one that I definitely approve of, however it comes to mind that some people might be perfectly satisfied with the disjointed nature of the current General Education layout. Many come to college with the intent of having a totally free and spread out pick of intro-level classes so they can enjoy themselves before committing to more “serious” major-oriented classwork. Any future Gen Ed reform will hopefully still allow these people to have freedom of choice in terms of difficulty and subject discipline.

2) Though I stand in agreement with the opinion that most General Education courses taught at Penn State are indeed for the “non-specialist” this does not by any means suggest that they are at the lowest level of the cognitive ladder…Even a basic calculus class or perhaps an intro international relations course can be much more difficult for the individual student than a higher level class in their chosen major. From personal experience, I’m currently taking Econ 106 which is pretty much statistics. Despite its intro-level designation, the course is challenging and forces me to spend a lot of time doing extra work.

So I think the real point of paragraph 1 is the lack of a “link” between the Gen Eds we do take here. And personally I can see how that would help with making Gen Eds more cohesive and not just a random spread of required classes. But honestly I don’t see right now how a link can be formed between classes like calculus, history, etc as well as still keeping them at a beginner’s level. Hopefully this conflict is discussed further.

3)I’m wondering how different exactly is a theme/coherence to gen eds from just a minor? For example a minor requires mainly intro to intermediate courses in the field. For a gen ed curriculum to have depth, would this be able to overlap with an existing minor? Aside from that, I agree that certain skills are critical and need more focus, especially logical thinking and writing/speaking.

~Group Deliberation: Abby, Sam, Sonia, Maya, Jordan, Emily, Shannon ~

Feb. 17- PART 2

A: ACT- lots of students were behind in core subjects on the ACT…should schools be in charge of getting students up to speed?

S: HS doesn’t want to teach how to take a test

Jo- as long as students understand basic things they should pass the exams.

E- if you go to practice classes you can “crack the code” and you know what questions to expect. You know what they’ll try to trick you on.

Jo- so should the test be changed?

All agree that it’s flawed.

A: colleges use these as benchmarks….so how else do they project how successful we’ll be?

S- depends on the school, some don’t look at it as much. But also numbers matter because of how many people apply.

M- Even though SATS are not perfect college is a lot of test taking so I understand why these are looked at.

So- A lot of my classes are not very exam based

A: SO should tax payers pay more to fund more scholarships?

S- that’s what the European system is, but it’s also harder to get into a good college.

M- where would they redistribute the money from?

E- People who have the money will be upset about paying higher taxes for lower income people.

E- especially if they have their own kids

M- That’s somewhat socialism if the government pays for everything but no one wants to call it that, even though that’s what a lot of people actually want.

Jo- And it works in a lot of countries

S- But I think our government is inefficient with their money

So- eventually this might happen, but I don’t think it will happen soon.

E- if tuition prices keep increasing will there be a rebellion at some point?

Jo- right now there’s just more debt being piled up

A: Should colleges become better at managing their funds? Would this decrease quality?

E- I would like to know where more of the money is going.

*Dr. J explains that our tuition does not directly go to things like the football program or a staff assistant, and not even professors. There are several dif. Blocks of our school budget: ex: state money. More complicated than just our money going to sports programs….Lots of drama caused my the unbalanced nature of the budget. *

M- So the school can only change things by changing how much they pay professors, etc.

A: BACK to Fair Opportunities. Any conclusions? We talked about increasing options, but do you think that if more people could got to 4 year schools, this would decrease the quality?

Jo- Depends on what school you go to, some schools accept very few. So there would only be a negative effect in terms of offering FEWER personal classes, larger sizes.

M- I agree.

S- if everyone has a degree, what is a degree worth?

Jo- But could having higher education improve the product or service?

A-so should kids be encouraged to go to different types of institutions rather than just a 4 yr college?

E- you have to know what kind of person you’re dealing with….not everyone will excel in 4 yr schools.

S- Community College is great for  a lot of people, but our society pushes university.

E- Our culture still negatively judges those who don’t go to 4 year schools

A: So how does this affect job prospects?

M- Many jobs need masters degrees, so Community College is a good place to start

So- we will always need people from trade schools to do the things that most people aren’t taught to do anymore

S- Many tech jobs are in demand now because now most people don’t know how to do those types of things as well.

Conclusions- Fairness should not be the #1 concern, due to the large drawbacks that come with it such as much larger classes and potential decreased quality. But more people should be encouraged to pursue their talents, whether it be in community college or trade school as well, since a 4 year university isnt’ what everyone needs.

My personal stake in higher education is obviously a very large one. Paying tuition, living away from home for several months at a time, and devoting hours upon hours to classes means that at the end of this 4-year experience I hope to leave with a diploma and some guarantee that I’ll find a job. But in reality that guarantee doesn’t exist. So the experience and education I do receive in university will have a huge impact on my own skills and ability to go further in life. My personal stake is that being taught the right things can move me forward while being taught the wrong things will make me less competitive in my field of work. Shaping higher education the right way will have a long-lasting effect on those who attend it, as well as those who benefit from having well-educated and skilled workers leading the world in the future. My personal stake is just like everyone else’s personal stake at Penn State; hopefully it’s worth it.