Description:
Extract from a book chapter: Career Interrupted
Title:
An Educated Woman
Brief:
To provide a personal reflection and evaluation of university education for women
Source:
Profiles of members of the Australian Federation of University Women
Length:
2,000 words (chapters contributed by individual AFUW members)
Status:
Completed & published
While studying for my M.A., I observed one day how some third-year students were having difficulty with an essay requiring an analysis of a poem. I remarked to my lecturer, who had coincidentally also taught me some twenty years earlier and assigned me the same head-splitting essay, that looking back, it all seemed so pointless now. Having sweated over that essay when I can now only barely remember the facts seemed futile. He took this comment very seriously because he knew that I was doubting the value of my tertiary education. I’ll never forget his reply because it caused me for the first time to really look at my university experience and enjoy its positive value.
Reflection Writing
‘Our task is not to teach you facts or what to think, but the essential process of how to think.’
Reflecting now on the long-term, and at times intangible, benefits gained from acquiring a university education, I see them fall into various categories. At the subject level, there is expertise in and a deep appreciation of various fields of study. Socially, there’s the companionship of like-minded peers and access to university extracurricular activities with the impetus to become politically and environmentally aware citizens. For some, a university education provides added social status. On an intellectual level, students are taught the ability to assimilate and express ideas orally and on paper. The most important legacy of such an education for me has, without doubt, been the ability to think clearly, evaluate, analyse and appreciate whatever comes my way in life, and then to be able to pass this on by way of guidance to my children and my students. Faced with issues that may be social, political or ethical, the ability to determine what response is required, formulate a strategy and apply this to complete any task at hand are skills that are developed, somehow. On reflection, I now see clearly how these thought processes were taught at university. We learned quite specific steps of analysis, applied logic, synthesis of ideas, research procedure and report writing all within various frameworks - whether they were philosophical, ethical, political, ideological, scientific, and within some literature genres, even spiritual. I live in the hope that I’ve passed some of this way of thinking on to my children (and perhaps to some students), and that in some small way, this has helped them to negotiate the ups and downs of life.