No thank you. What purpose would it serve to require my 17-year-old, who will soon enter our local CC’s “Computer Gaming and Simulation” program, to either have to spend an additional year before attaining his degree or substitute some of the goal-focused courses in that program with irrelevant ones? It would either cost us money we don’t have, or it would cheapen and dilute the degree.

People who want to expand their minds for the pure enjoyment of learning can read on their own, or they can go to a traditional college and skip the partying. The strength of the community college is the ability to focus on the core knowledge a field requires. It’s a low-cost, no-frills education for people who want to better their lives in a practical way.

Reading Aristotle might make my son a better game designer by making him a better thinker (though Sun Tsu would be more along his lines, and he’s already taken a stab at Machiavelli), but what he really needs to learn in the next couple years is C++, Java, and 3-D modeling. He can read Aristotle on his own time, after he’s got a job and is self-supporting.

Let the 4-year liberal arts institutions do what they do. Let community colleges and technical schools do what they do.

Mary Beth Voelker

via e-mail