General Education and History Courses

Chris Iorio

The Rise and Fall of the Western Civilization Course By Gilbert Allardyce

 

1. Are there benefits, if any, of general education courses for undergraduate college students?

There certainly are many benefits of requiring undergraduate college students to take general education courses. While high school to some degree gives students some experience in various fields, there is still much that students are not introduced to and aware of. Furthermore, there are advanced levels of academic disciplines that students may not be anywhere close to competency in. For example, at least one college level English course is required for most undergraduate degrees. Vast majority of disciplines require English to be used, whether written or in speech. Regardless if one's discipline requires the English language, further schooling in English would be beneficial to everyone who uses the English language, especially to those whose job requires it, and has a high potential to leading to an increased performance of their job. From my personal experience, taking an English 101 course had helped me vastly improve my writing skills, which has had a positive affect on my work in many other areas in and out of school. The English example aside, it also gives students a broader understanding of various disciplines which will undoubtedly make each student wiser than if they were to solely focus on their own discipline. As historian Preserved Smith stated on page 3: “A freshmen without comprehension of the unity of knowledge... was not prepared to grasp the meaning of separate disciplines.” Such a “comprehension of the unity of knowledge” undoubtedly makes an individual more well rounded and able to better deal with situations that may require just even a basic understanding of a different field than their own.

2. Are history courses relevant to the education of non-history majors?

Undoubtedly education in history, particularly western civilization, serves a great purpose in the minds of western students. There are many who are uneducated in the roots of our civilization and of different nations, and how our society has come to be were it is today. As James Harvey Robinson had stated on page 11, one of the chief functions of history education is to present knowledge which “clearly served to forward the main purpose of seeing more and more distinctly how this, our present Western civilization, in which we have been born and are now immersed, has come about.” Such an undertaking is important for a variety of reasons. One of the major ones is based on the proverb which loosely goes something like “those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it's mistakes.” If at least a fair portion of society are not educated on our past, and the struggles, mistakes, and travesties that had to be endured to get to where our society is today, then our society is indeed doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Therefore, it is probably a good idea that people are to some degree educated in history so those who become the leaders of our society take care to be better leaders than those who have come before, and also so that the average citizen stands for more just causes and does not fall victim to the past errors that citizens of the world had made who had come before them. In this way, history education helps to shape a better society.

3. Should general education courses be required of undergraduate students?

Throughout the whole text the idea of a general education requirement for undergraduate students, and how rigid the requirements should be, is debated. As said on page 31, in regards to the original philosophy held on general education: “Compulsion was inherent in the old idea of a common learning: what all educated men should know, all students should be required to study.” As this idea is argued against in the latter writings in the text, I concur to a degree. I think it is still wise to require students to have a general education in areas that are applicable to their chosen discipline, like as aforementioned in the answer to question one, English courses which are generally universally applicable to all disciplines. However, those which are not applicable to a given discipline in even a remote way should not be required of students of said discipline. Rather, general education requirements should be different among the different majors as it is done today at most universities.