Topics Education

Question I am stuck on a decision that I hope one of you can help me with. I am graduating in June (2006) and everyone is telling me to go to college. I am currently protesting college - thinking that if I self-teach myself (by reading many books), then I could possibly gain more knowledge than if I am sitting in a classroom with many other students. I am stubborn with this idea. I assume that with a teacher in a classroom full of students, (s)he is teaching the subject, not the people. (I hope that makes sense.) I am not too sure if my thinking is something I should go by, or if I should just grow up and go to college. Any opinion would be great.

Accepted:
April 19, 2006

Comments

You are right: You can possibly learn more from reading books than by going to college. But then it's also true that you might possibly learn more by going to college than from reading books on your own.

The real question is: which path will gain you more, and more important, knowledge and understanding?

This question is hard to answer in the abstract -- certainly for me, but also for you. If you choose the solitary reading program: Will you still be motivated to go on six months later? And after a year, will you still have a clear grasp of what you understood in the first month? And if you choose college: Will you get into a good one with lots of bright and interesting peers (in my experience, students tend to learn no less from one another than from their teachers)? And will you be able to find there classes taught by people who are truly engaging and inspiring?

Given the uncertainties, I would suggest that you go to college (assuming you have a place for September) and give it your very best shot, for a semester at least, by finding the very best people -- fellow-students and teachers -- to learn from. Then revisit the question by comparing more knowledgeably your college experience against your experience with solitary reading (which you might refresh during the June-September period). Come New Year, you'd probably find yourself a lot less uncertain than you are now.

Going to college isn't just being in a structured reading program. Ideally, at college, your reading will be guided and given an intelligent shape; it will be enhanced by background information, by probing questions and arguments, by stimulating alternative interpretations (from your teachers and your fellow students); your thoughts about your reading will be refined as you learn to express them to others, both orally and in writing; your ability to engage in critical evaluation will be sharpened by weighing your own thoughts against the proposals' of others (as will your sense of fallibility); and you will be exposed to subjects that you cannot readily teach yourself and no doubt to others whose existence you hadn't even suspected.

When college works as it should, it allows you to imagine alternate possible ways of living your life in the "real" world, as you experiment with different disciplines, and are thrust into the orbits of sometimes unlikely people who might serve as mentors and role models. These could be your teachers, or, more often than not, your fellow students.

It gives you a terrific opportunity to become acquainted with people from cultures very different from your own, to acquire a new repertoire of tastes from books to food to music.

But mostly, when college works as it should, it gives you that precious, precious time, in and out of class, to muddle through, and, in so doing, to figure out who you are and what you are like, first, for yourself, and then, crucially, in relation to the community to which you belong.