Meiland essay first draft

Hagiwara1

Tomoya Hagiwara
Mr. James
ARW Section AC
6 Jun, 2007

Meiland essay first draft

Is college education really useless? I felt this question in slideshows of “Shift Happens” - Karl Fisch on the internet. In the slideshows, he/she says that your job probably doesn’t exit. He/she also says that half of knowledge that students study in college will be useless in two years. But I don’t think college education is useless. Therefore I would like to argue that college education is useful.
First, in college, students study the way they should deal with the fact. Let me give an example. If they believe undoubtedly something without evidence (just like feeling), it might turn out to completely be false. This suggests that a belief they believe without confirmation have a possibility of fault. Meiland says in “College Thinking” “it is rational to believe something only if one has a basis for that belief. One basis is what we call evidence” (THE ELP READER line 19, page 9). Therefore students learn that there is the possibility and that we must have evidence.
And second reason is a little bit similar to the first reason I stated above. The reason why I disagree with this idea that “a college education seems to be fairly useless” is that in college students study not only current studies but also “how to think.” I believe it is important to think critically not only in higher education but also in daily life. For example, there is a lot of untrue information these days. Consequently we have to examine it and to choose information which is relevant. And Meiland says in the same text “the college student must perform another sort of intellectual work on the material, namely critical examination and evaluation” (THE ELP READER line 5, page 8). Therefore critical examination is required to college students.
However, of course I have to admit that idea that “a college education seems to be fairly useless” is partly true, because many parts of what students learn in college would be out of date. I think college is also the place where we study latest technology or knowledge. Therefore if what they learn in college would be out of date, I can’t deny that idea i.e. I have to admit it.
Having said three things in order to explain my ideas in the paragraph of two to four, I don’t think college education is useless. To make the long story short, college students study not only the latest technology or knowledge but also learn how to deal with the fact and how to think critically, although I have to admit a college education is partly useless. Therefore college students have to study not only the latest things that would be out of date but also learn how to deal with the fact and how to think critically. Finally college students have to continue to study their specialty from book, journal, web site on the internet, and so on even after they graduate from college in order to solve the problem that half of what they learn in college will be useless.

(511Words)

*I know this is short. I’m so sorry but I’ll develop and write more about 200 words by June 11th.