Do we know culture?

The class discussion that we had on Wednesday evening about our reading intrigued me greatly. The main topic of the reading was our curriculum at Universities. Are we receiving enough culture in our education? This has been a topic for decades and I have thought about this before, especially with BYU’s general education courses. My opinion is that we are in one of the greatest times of human civilization. People might argue that on average people are less cultured than they were 50 years ago but I would argue contrarily. How many college graduates were there 50 years ago compared to now? The number of high school graduates has increased as well.
Our society has boomed because of specialization. The first factories thrived on this concept and though the first factories were not all bright and cheery places they spawned the industrial revolution which is why we are so successful today. Specialization in universities is happening because there is so much more to learn. In sciences it is impossible to know every little thing about the fields of chemistry, biology, and physics. There is just too much knowledge out there, ask any professor here on campus. That is why specialization has been developed in these fields and specialists to relate these fields. Here at BYU we have chemist, biochemists, and biologists. The beauty is that there is knowledge shared between them and more questions can be answered to advance our society even more. I use science as my example because I am studying for a BS and not a BA but I’m sure someone can relate the same way to the liberal arts.
Now I am not proposing that we specialize everything and do away with the general requirements. What I am proposing is that the university should teach a student what he needs to know for his career and also teach the student the value of learning. The most intelligent people that I have met have a thirst for knowledge, they have an appreciation for the arts and normally it isn’t because they took a class in college. That is what needs to change, students need to be taught how to learn and why to learn it. The thirst for knowledge has gotten us this far and will continue to make our society great, we increase the desire and knowledge follows.