Losing Sight of the Point

In the beginning of Friday's class, we briefly discussed how teaching is the only career in which people will thank one for not coming in to work.  I think this is a good point, and it highlights a problem which I have noticed in the education system as a whole, particularly the American system.

The problem is that students tend to lose sight of the point of education - namely, to become educated.  One type of student begins to focus on grades alone, seeing school as a kind of competition where they don't actually need to learn anything, but need only to get the best grades possible.  This type of student will never object to something that a teacher says, even if they disagree with it - they don't care what is right, they only care that the teacher likes them enough to grade them well.  The other type of student sees school as work forced upon them by others - a kind of slavery, so to speak.  In middle and high school, this can sometimes be true, due to the current configuration of the American education system.  However, once one reaches college, school becomes optional.

It is, of course, likely that everyone will experience a few days upon which they do not wish to go to class, either because they are feeling sick (but not sick enough to skip class) or they are upset or they have something else they wish to do.  It is also possible that there may be a class which is required in order to take other, desired classes, and people may complain about such a class, but the common attitude seems to go far beyond this.  People complain every time they have to go to class, in every one of their classes.  In cases like this, one must wonder why these people are in college at all.  I think that this attitude is likely a carry-over from high school, where the students' mentality is still stuck in their former mode of education.