What is the point of taking general education classes?

NIU students are expected to take a wide variety of courses before beginning their respective major classes, many of which have nothing to do with their majors.

Many of you already know about the classes that I am talking about. Whether it’s UNIV 101, a class about how to be a college student, or classes like “Introduction to Theater,” I cannot for the life of me figure how this will help me in life. Of all the pointless classes at NIU, Psychology 102 is by far the worst.

It is often said to be an extremely difficult class, but my question is, is the difficulty warranted? Furthermore, if a student is not a psychology major, why should he or she have to take it?

Psychology 102 is structured so 65 percent of the total grade is made up of tests. With that much weight put on exams, it is not surprising that many students do not do very well on them.

“The average test score is somewhere around a 64 percent,” said psychology 102 coordinator John Skowronski.

This low average test score seems to imply something about the test rather than the students taking it.

Another major part of the overall grade, in this pointless class, is “experiment hours.”

The requirement is only eight hours of experiment credit, but if you want to get a B or higher the “extra credit” eight hours are definitely needed.

I’m not the only student who feels this way.

“I don’t believe a class should basically require extra credit for me to receive a reasonable grade,” said freshman accounting major Daniel Anderson.

What do these experiments teach the students who are taking them? Nothing.
In fact, what do most general education classes teach students?

My biggest complaint with this whole basic requirements concept is that it does not seem to induce actual learning.

The lectures have little to do with what students will be doing in the real world.

And the tests, those dreaded Scantron tests, do not actually reflect the intelligence of the test taker.

This combination seems to explain why many students do not bother showing up to lectures.

I’m only one man, and I will probably not be able to change the entire American educational structure, but some changes in the procedure and grading could go a long way toward students becoming more interested and educated.

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