Because of the nation-wide strike in French public universities, my experience in the Parisian education system has been limited to my one hour per week at the Catholic university in Paris, where I am enrolled in a history class which I believe has been held six times (easiest three credits ever). I was very disappointed at not being able to enroll in the Sorbonne, and felt that the “study” of my study abroad was rather lacking, since, let’s face it, the courses at the IES center for us American students leave much to be desired.
However, my host mom kindly took it upon herself to enrich my perspective of the French education system by spending an entire family dinner explaining to me and my American roommate exactly how pointless the U.S. undergraduate liberal arts schools are. Why would you waste four years of your life and money attending school to learn general information that isn’t tailored specifically to your future career? Isn’t that what high school is for?
French teens usually decide on their career paths much earlier than Americans, because in their education system, changing majors often results in losing a semester or whole year of credit. As such, their classes at the university level are generally much more tailored to their future career plans, and are more or less equivalent to U.S. graduate school. (When I brought up the fact that neither of my parents attended graduate school, my host mother’s response suggested that their jobs could be just as well executed by trained monkeys.)
While initially I felt angered and insulted by this encounter (not to mention frustrated: I mean, I am spending four years of my life and money on this), it got me thinking about high school attitudes toward academics. Everyone’s been that kid: “Why do we have to learn this? I’m never going to use calculus in real life. Is this on the final? Because otherwise I won’t bother.”
While I won’t argue with the fact that taking classes you’re not interested in is incredibly boring and frustrating, hopefully by this point we’ve all come to the conclusion that a liberal arts education is actually a good thing. If I’d had the presence of mind and the French skills, I’d like to have responded to my host mother by saying, “Alternatively, we’ve got the rest of our lives to spend on our careers: why start that now?”
Our life isn’t a race to see who can climb the job ladder faster: at least, it’s not supposed to be. The Parisian students in my entry-level history class at the Catholic university whisper, text and Facebook during the entire class, because to them, it doesn’t matter. Since their entire grade is based on one test at the end of the semester, they don’t even have to attend class, as long as they do enough research on their own. Yeah, maybe they’ll be able to start earning a paycheck in their chosen career before I will, but will their limited academic knowledge really make them better at their jobs? I don’t think so.
Besides, a mixture of classes I have to take and classes I choose to take is just plain more fun than jumping directly into graduate-style courses. I know we all get tired of hearing it, but college is a holistic experience. If you rush through it just in order to move on to the next stage, who’s to say you’re not going to spend your whole life doing that? Talk about wasting time: who wants to constantly keep rushing ahead? Pushing for the next promotion? Enjoy the moment, French people!
Even if my host mother will never understand this, I’d like to think that the supposedly “useless” knowledge I’ve gathered during classes completely unrelated to my career goals will someday pay off. If anything, I like to think they make me more interesting to be around.
Sure, I’m an English major, but I can also discuss life cycle nutrition at great length. I mean, who doesn’t love learning random facts? Maybe I’m just a complete geek, but I’d rather be at least somewhat familiar with a variety of subjects than feel limited by my career path. And most U.S. students do get the opportunity to eventually immerse themselves in “useful” knowledge that will help them in their job. Maybe it takes a little longer, but honestly: what’s the rush?
