Do you AGREE or DISAGREE: "If we don't fight them over there, we'll fight them over here"?

I think I do agree with her. From the way I see it, neither a high school nor college that is composed of a majority or all of one population is the right place to be exposed to a variety of ideas and insight. I obviously didn't attend Radcliffe or any all-girls school so I can't know if my thoughts are in sync with Helen Keller’s, but from what has been my experience, students that attend schools that consist of a majority population (like Radcliffe was as a sister school) don't have a large breadth of knowledge about an infinite number of things that they haven't been exposed to as much as students from a diverse school.

I know you attended an all-girls school and I am in no way trying to offend anyone who does; I'm speaking rather generally here and this applies particularly to Keller because even though she attended a prestigious women’s college, she did so at the turn of the 20th century. I attended a small liberal arts private junior high school of 80-something kids. Everyone was super-quirky, a bit odd, and very artsy.

I thought we were all so different especially because we were ethnically diverse. When I left for high school I realized that we had all seen been trained to see through a rose tinted lens. I went to a public high school which was 180 degrees in the opposite direction as my middle school.

It was super conservative, preppy, people flaunted their wealth, and disliked anyone who stood out. That last one was hard for me to not do and I felt very isolated and lonely. Everyone seemed to think in the same way and no one was really interesting, or at least not apparently.

I began to feel for the “others”. Our school database only accommodated these ethnicities which were filled in on each standardized test: Asian, Caucasian, Other. That’s listed in largest to smallest.

Anyway my point is that I learned a lot at these exceptional schools but that didn’t change the fact that I was so unprepared to face “the real world” and I still felt so naïve and inexperienced as I left for college. The only thing that kept me grounded and thinking abstractly was travel. I couldn’t find myself gaining a different or more evolved perspective from my peers.

Truthfully, I didn’t learn much from them and college is only somewhat shaping my character and allowing me to absorb more and just reflect. High school predominantly just felt like academic ennui and everyone was so disgustingly competitive; no one really “shared” ideas and those who did had to keep to themselves because others discouraged it. I completely agree with Troy.

Education really does trump creativity hence hindering the capability to think outside the box. I wish more educational institutions would make more of an effort to find a progressive way to incorporate the two because in the long run I truly believe it would be much more beneficial than just simply learning about this subject or that career. Perhaps people are hesitant to deviate from the tried-and-true method of teaching and find it challenging and daunting to teach in such a non-traditional way.

I find it sad that society is so adverse to anomaly and I commend Miss Keller for being such a transcendent, strong woman. Well that's just my 2 cents. Don't take anything too seriously from an undergrad who's trying to milk a lifelong valuable way of thinking from her college.

C'est la vie. Maybe graduate school will be of more use in this endeavor. What about you?

Do you agree with Helen Keller?

...what is the true purpose of college..." If anyone should know the answer to that I should, but I don't. I don't think there is a single true purpose to college. Different colleges have different missions/roles to play.

And I've always said that like most things in life a person will get out of college what they put into it. Since everybody wants different things their college experience and what they get out of it will be unique to them. Not knowing the context of the quote I'm not sure I fully understand her comment.

I think the biggest role any college education should play is to expose you to a diverse, even eclectic, collection of other people's ideas. It is then your role to investigate,synthesize and extrapolate from them. If you are lucky you will come away with not just a better appreciation of other people's ideas but the beginning formulation of a few good ones of your own.

College should not be the end of your educational quest but the beginning. Your comment about Radcliffe brought a fond memory to mind. When I was in graduate school in the 70's I had a dear friend who was fiercely proud of the fact that she was a graduate of Harvard and not Radcliffe.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.