Live And Learn

1167 Words5 Pages
In Louis Menand’s “Live and Learn” Article from The New Yorker, he summarizes three theories of why college exists today. Theory one talks about college being a four year intelligence test. Theory two states that College teaches you only what you need to know about a chosen career path. Finally, theory three says college is where students can be taught what they need to know in order to enter a non-liberal arts career. I believe college is thought of as extra schooling, used to get a degree in one particular career, also known as theory two. Menand says college was designed as a process to separate the more intelligent members of society from the less intelligent ones. This is theory one. Over four years a student must demonstrate their ability to complete assignments well and in a timely matter. They must show their level of responsibility, maturity, and integrity. If a student is unpleasant, inflexible, irresponsible or careless in their work, it shows in their grades. At the end of the four year test, graduates receive their G.P.A., a score used by professional schools and employers to measure their skills, intelligence, and potential. They depend on colleges to sort students by intelligence as they pass into the workforce. Menand says “An intelligent person is open-minded, an outside-the-box thinker, and effective communicator, is prudent, self-critical, consistent, and so on.”(72). In 1948, the Educational Testing Service went into business, and the S.A.T. and A.C.T. soon became the basic, universal method to identify the more intelligent students of high school. These tests disregard family backgrounds, and give everyone the an equal opportunity of attending into college. Furthermore, college is used to identify the more intelligent members of society, so that they can be pointed to the right career path to maximize their talents. Therefore, it is very

More about Live And Learn

Open Document