The education department: antithesis of the liberal arts

By: Luis A. Oviedo
Contributing Writer

With over four hundred students, the education department is the largest department on the campus. However, with such a size, a normal amount of discontent is anticipated.

Instead of simple discontent, what exists on this campus is almost downright loathing.

The education department is the apple that has the proverbial worm in it, and for most of us, we have had that half-eaten worm of bitterness in our mouths from the education department robbing us of the love that we have for teaching.

I myself am a fallen education department student, and my story is not that different from many others. I came in with a hope that I would graduate a teacher. However, the problems began from day one. I was told that, with an additional seven classes in the education department, I would be able to become a teacher in my fields of study: history and Spanish.

This “fact” was one of the biggest allures to get me here, but when I got here, I was told I had been lied to. I quickly found out it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 14-16 classes. This was not much a problem at the time. Then, issues escalated.

I was forced to make a four-year plan in which I had to map the next four years of learning for myself. When I finally developed a plan for myself, I walked into the office of the professor who took care of that work. She made me rework it so that it met her model.

I was stunned. Not only did she tell me that I could not space out my major classes along with my education ones, but I also had to eventually finish my major before my junior year so that my junior year could be filled with nothing but education courses at full 18 semester-hour terms.

I was also required to attend summer school if I planned on graduating in four years, and I had to give up my dream of studying abroad.

Those decisions were hard to make, but I made them so that I could become the teacher I wanted to be. Eventually, due to the difficulty of my course load and my being so young and not prepared to take such advanced courses in history, I did poorly.

I was then told that I might not be able to enter the department, or possibly enter but be under probation. I proceeded to worry.

So, I fought to get the chance to do a full fifth year. This elevated my money woes, but it was worth it to become a teacher. Eventually, I was told that if I dropped a major, I could get through faster.

I proceeded to drop my Spanish degree, even though the department was one of my pride and joys.

Then, the changes came.

And, like angry mob, all I saw was anger, betrayal and resentment. I was then told that with the new changes, I would need to do overloads in semesters in order to graduate in five years.

Also, due to errors made by a certain individual, I found out that some courses were not offered when I scheduled them. The straw that broke the camel’s back was shown and raised above my head for peroration for the course of actions that would proceed after this blow: “Is it possible to do a sixth year?” I flat-out told the individual no and that I quit.

The decision was hard to make, but the amount of incompetence which permeated from this course of events made me feel like the Frank Grimes of Monmouth College.

The next move was to tell my friends.

What would happen next haunts me as a professional to this day. As I began to tell people that I was leaving the department, I was given congratulations not just by those who dropped it, but also by those still in the department who were working on student teaching. Thirty individuals who were completing or going to student teach shook my hand and said with the deepest remorse, “IF I ONLY HAD THE COURAGE TO DO IT I WOULD BE WITH YOU.”

The tortured continue to march into classes which are meant to fill their heads with the understanding of learning and theory and feel that they are not prepared. Students are being made to commute for 35 minutes to work for an hour, and return with no compensation for the gas that it will take for them to get to the job they completed. They have been given no options but to take the bull by the horns and grit through and become teachers because they feel they have no choice.

As of now there is one lone student who has come to the battle line and is attempting to figure out where all of this comes from.

I greatly applaud her for her work and her effort.

However, it is the education department’s job to figure out the discontent and what is going wrong, and not the job of a student.

We are a school of the liberal arts, and yet those who will teach and fill the minds of young children cannot take part in this tradition because the education department has nearly made it impossible, not only to study abroad, but to take courses outside of our major.

They speak of over-crowding in classrooms as there is a 1:100 ratio of tenure-track professors in the department and classes which have over 30 students. These kinds of issues are things that I, along with many others, have become concerned about over the years.

My suggestion is to have the education department explain themselves and answer to the complaints of so many who have left because of scorn of the indifferent, cold and arrogant department that has now become the antithesis to learning and the liberal arts.