Methods Courses

The Quebec system of education differs from the rest of North America. It has one extra step that a student must undertake between high school and University not found anywhere else. The step is called Cegep. The idea is to cut down high school time by at least a year, where students graduating from high school in Quebec will generally be 17 years of age, the age is at least a year older in most of Canada. This instituation, Cegep, is used as an introduction to University life and studies. It also helps students who wish to obtain a technique.

One of the pre-university programs offered is social studies. It mostly consists of psychology and history courses, and, especially, research method courses. Three of them are required for the attainement of a diploma: Quantitative methods, research methods and Integrated Activity.

Quantitative methods covers ways to quantitate your research and how to present such data. Research methods covers the research and referal parts of research. Finally, Integrated Activity puts all the skills together and lets you perform your own research based on the skills and know-how's you'd aquire. The classes present problems though, given their limited nature but do present a student with great and usefull skills.

The problems with the classes are mainly the topics covered. Each class averages about 3hrs of class a weak but offer little in material to cover such a length. The homeworks and labs often time feel over the top with teachings that aren't technologically up-to-date. What's worst is if a student is in fact up-to-date then the classes become painful, long and feel useless. Often times, the quantifying methods have already been achieved through mathematics and other classes that required research projects.

On the other hand, these classes, whose purpose is to point out the obvious, can be extremely useful when specifics about researches are overlooked. After observing a good portion of young adults who are on their way to becoming fully fledged adults, I feel as if these classes should be imposed on such a group. Finding, researching and asking the right questions when it comes to career interviews, house and vehicle purchases and making decision when no one is there to make them for you can be a terrifying experience if one doesn't have a proper training in researching which I realize a lot of young adults lack. My sample maybe biased given the area from which it came from compared to the income parents of these yound adults have and the mentality that follows, but a lot of it falls far from being prepared for the pitfalls of finances and researched, mature decisions. Then again, this probably explains the "-for dummies" books' popularity in our society.

Cegep does have it's advantages. This includes the fact that it helps get rid of people who don't wish to carry on in school from University campus' . Some of it, however, feels like filler for the intellectual who use their brains outside of school. Such is the case with the methods courses mentionned above. It rewards the ones who aren't as capable, while boring those aware.