Switch the dark light in education With the increasingly harsh education system and increasingly competitive workforce, students and teachers are under pressure to do their best in every job they do. Educators do their best to teach what students need, and students take what is useful for their future. Electives allow for useful aspects in a student's life in learning outside of the core curriculum, but "if the light by which we are guided goes out, it will gradually diminish and die by itself", making students' thoughts dull and non-vibrant . “By dint of adhering to multiple applications one would lose sight of the principles, and once the principles were completely forgotten, the methods could no longer be invented and men would continue without intelligence and without art to apply scientific procedures no longer understood” as said by Alexis de Tocqueville delves into the need to have classes outside the central nucleus to have external learning. Some people and students do not find elective courses within college to be useful and beneficial to their future career or worth their time and money. However, students should take elective courses, because these courses bring many student-friendly factors, such as helping to develop a well-rounded student and aiding in choosing the career path a student may want to pursue. Elective courses allow students to develop into a well-rounded person. Nowadays, businesses, workforce jobs, and even graduate schools are looking for students with an education that involves many aspects and subjects beyond taking the required core classes. Not everyone wants a student who doesn't take advantage of that and goes and explore a different topic...middle of the paper...needs to be considered a well-rounded student, who models a good candidate and a candidate that the workforce is thirsty. However, electives stimulate students' curiosity and influence their decisions for the future. Students will be constantly curious about what they want to undertake and find in their studies and consider various subjects as optional ones. “Students will cross an invisible boundary; new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to be established around and within him; or the old laws will be enlarged and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live under the license of a higher order of beings” of whom they bring valuable knowledge and education extended not only from the leading classes but also from the elective ones. (Thoreau). The electives will shine the light these students need to go out into the world.