I, for one, have never let academia get in the way of my scholarly studies...Originally Posted by marct
Hi 120,
Okay, I noticed you phrased this as "pursuing further academic goals" (emphasis added). I trust that you certainly aren't giving up further scholarly goals!
Back to Adam's comment about broadening history education...my concern right now is that it is in fact TOO broad. By that I mean people are forced to examine too many sub-fields without being prepared with the basic tools. By that I mean a good course at the freshman level in both historiography AND research and writing skills. As it stands at most universities, students don't even really get a chance to learn these basic skills until after they've suffered through three years or so of general 'American' history, environmental history, gender studies, and the rest. I don't mind having broad offerings, but I'd really prefer that students have tools to evaluate those offerings without being forced into them.
What concerns me more is the general societal "either/or" mindset. I also tend to suspect (but can't prove) that some of that stems from the breakdown in fundamentals in our education (evaluation skills for one).
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