Publicado el 08-22-2012
The Importance of Having
a Well-Rounded Culture
Certainly, technological and fundamentally scientific knowledge are very important for society’s culture. However, consideration should also be given to the importance of studying subjects defined as humanities that complete the cultural background of an individual who wants to have a basic well-rounded education.
Although history, literature, art, music and similar subjects are cultivated today, it is timely to insist on the need that they will not be placed on a secondary position in the curricula. Specialization, emphasis in a given subject whether science or letters is something good, but this should not exclude knowing about other subjects that contribute so that the teen-agers, youths, and adults know about issues that are part of the history of civilization and that are still important in contemporary culture, even delighting the spirit.
Today, technology has created wonderful inventions and it is monopolizing, so to speak, the attention of educators and students. That monopoly, when exaggerated, is extremely detrimental for the development of general culture in society. Naturally, those who specialize on a given subject are individuals who are very adroit and in their field they have knowledge and skills that are way beyond the average. Actually, this happens in every field of knowledge, because there are always people who have engaged more than others in cultivating intellectual disciplines that are helpful.
However, the unfortunate thing is when there is an obsession with studying or knowing only certain manifestations of culture, be they technical or in the field of humanities. Nowadays cyber-technology, for example, is limiting the horizon for the general culture that for centuries has made civilization strong. Without exaggerations going to an extreme or the other, a compromise should be found so that the contemporary school, without frustrating individual vocations, might encourage general culture, adjusted to the circumstances at the different stages in the lives of the students.
|
El colombiano 
El Hispano Newspaper - 
Diario Horizonte 
Periodico Identidad Latina - 
Periodico Providence en 
Vida Nueva - publicacion de la