I include this section in my syllabus to give the students a general idea of what my overall hopes are for what they need to get out of the course. I teach at a community college where there are very few history majors and most students take my class as a general education elective. As such, I feel that I can sacrifice some of the specific historical details to focus my class on becoming immersed in the process of getting an education and learning to think critically, using history as the backdrop to that education. Likewise, I focus my class on the broader intellectual trends of United States history and tend to remove myself from the traditional test-lecture mode.