Recommendation Report Stance

Going into group discussion my mind was set on an exploration approach to GenEds. I have had great experience with my GenEds first semester and enjoyed the thought of being able to choose to take classes that actually seemed interesting to the student. The other two approaches seemed unnecessary and unappealing to me. The themes approach seemed too specific to one single topic, thus defeating the person of GenEds all together in my opinion, and the skills approach too bland, we have been forced to focus on the main skills (reading, writing and math) throughout our whole educational careers so why would we want  to do that in college while we actually have some freedom of what we can learn about?

Coming out of group discussion I had the same opinions for the most part, with the realization that skills are necessary to a healthy education and future in the job world so should be included somewhat in the GenEd curriculum. I learned that for the most part my classmates felt the same way as I did. They all have had good experiences with Gen Eds and believe that exploration is the most important part of the GenEd process. Everyone agreed that the themes approach was too limited to one subject and didn’t make much sense. What really helped shape my opinion was our discussion of the skills option. My group talked about how basic knowledge is good because it’s applicable to many careers and how within the broad category of skills there can be many different types of skills classes one could take. For example not just a skills class tailored to reading, writing or math. A skills class about finance and taxes would help college students learn about a real world task in a classroom setting, preparing them for the future. Skills classes could also be very broad like science or specific and connected to your major for example psych students need to know how to talk to people and might want to take a public speaking course or one that helps them learn to feel more comfortable talking with others. The more my group talked about the skills option the more it seemed necessary to include it in the GenEd curriculum at some level. What I will be proposing in my recommendation report is an option based primarily off of exploration (60%) with a good amount of skills based classes included (40%) to help prepare students for the real world and life after college.

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