Yes, I'm paying to take a class I don't need to take, and yes it will be boring, but the reality is that I have to take that class whether I want to or not, I really don't think it is up to the professor to make it 'worthwhile' to me. It really is possible to take a class that is 'beneath' you without acting like an idiot because of it.
Yes, it's possible, but why is it necessary
for general education to be put in that position?
It makes sense for me to toe the line in my major and make the best of a less-than-optimal situation because everyone takes blah so we all have to be at the same level going into the next step. It also makes sense under that situation to avoid being a know-it-all or an obnoxious jerk.
It doesn't make sense for anyone for
general education purposes to be in a section for which no purpose will be served other than obeying the letter of the rules instead of the spirit of the purpose of general education. Fine, a mature person doesn't have to be a jerk about it, but why in all the name of whatever you hold dear would people insist that the only thing to do it suck it up...and keep it sucked up for several classes through several semesters? No, that's not why people go to college. The professors do know better than a novice what needs to be done in the big picture and what a general education consists of, but making people
who already have the particular knowledge and skills of a given general education or introductory class sit through those classes is just a waste of time and a waste of good will from those willing to keep it sucked up.
That is a different situation than the precious little snowflake who just doesn't wanna do the work and sees no purpose in gaining a particular set of skills or knowledge. Those people need a good clunk to the head. But registering a complaint that a given introductory class is irrelevant because all the skills are already acquired makes sense to me. Right now, I'm trying to get our department to give tests or other evaluations to transfer students so that fewer people are put into classes where they don't belong because our sequence of core classes has a different number of classes than the core sequence from most of our transfer institutions and figuring out who goes where often means people are repeating classes they have already taken, which is to no one's benefit.
