There aren't any rules around here - we're trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
"Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it is more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything-from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it....eliminate the whole degree-and-grading system and the you'll get a real education.
...The abolition of the degree-and-grading system produced a...negative reaction in all but a few students at first, since it seemed, on first judgment, to destroy the whole University system. One student laid it wide open when she said with complete candor, 'Of course you can't eliminate the degree and grading system. After all, that's what we're here for.'
She spoke the truth. The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a little hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and the mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealistic attitude. "
--Robert M. Pirsig "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
So has the grading system failed us? Only producing imitators. Or has it been silently serving it's designed purpose? Was it designed to make followers instead of leaders? Students ignorant that they are being made to be sheep in shepherds clothing? There are two graduates one who has learned that success means doing exactly what he or she has been told, and one who has learned by taking new, untested approaches? Which would you hire? Which would you rather be? I can't say I am completely opposed to the system. It certainly solves (probably over-solves) the problem of too many Chiefs, not enough Indians.
"Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it is more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything-from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it....eliminate the whole degree-and-grading system and the you'll get a real education.
...The abolition of the degree-and-grading system produced a...negative reaction in all but a few students at first, since it seemed, on first judgment, to destroy the whole University system. One student laid it wide open when she said with complete candor, 'Of course you can't eliminate the degree and grading system. After all, that's what we're here for.'
She spoke the truth. The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a little hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and the mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealistic attitude. "
--Robert M. Pirsig "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
So has the grading system failed us? Only producing imitators. Or has it been silently serving it's designed purpose? Was it designed to make followers instead of leaders? Students ignorant that they are being made to be sheep in shepherds clothing? There are two graduates one who has learned that success means doing exactly what he or she has been told, and one who has learned by taking new, untested approaches? Which would you hire? Which would you rather be? I can't say I am completely opposed to the system. It certainly solves (probably over-solves) the problem of too many Chiefs, not enough Indians.
Labels: thoughts
posted by Nate Mecham at 3:47 PM
7 Comments:
Zeal without knowledge.
Hopefully, the conformity we are asked to exhibit in highschool and undergraduate education is conformity to the established knowledge of our field. While we are not here to worship what is known, there are some things that are known -- or at least they are a good start -- and I think we can responsibly make our own contribution only when we have mastered what has gone before us.
Would Picasso or Beethoven have been truly innovative if they had lacked understanding of the conventions they were defying? Wouldn't they then have been geniuses only accidentally?
A related issue is the worship of the novel. Sometimes it seems that we aren't seeking truth anymore (at least in the humanities) but only seeking to make or think something that hasn't been done or thought before. But, of course, new isn't necessarily better or even good.
I neither asked for nor offered to start 'the revolution' against the school system. I readily accept the value of knowledge and wisdom already discovered. I seek after these things. And Although I pointed out a system that perpetuates conformity, it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual to decide why they are in school. Knowledge or Grades? There is an obvious relation between the two, but are they aren't completely reflexive. If you are in school only for grades you are being educated to follow directions. If you are in school for knowledge, that knowledge becomes a tool.
I may have made formal education look like it was systematically victimizing every student, which isn't the case. However, it is true that not all, but some students are going through the educational hoops only to get their degree-treat. If there are victims they have become parters with the system in making themselves victims.
My goal is to awaken students to a more powerful education that they have the ability and resources to enjoy. It is the awareness that we have a choice that is key. Once we recognize our motives we increase our ability to alter and direct them. So are our reasons for pursuing school as important as our how we are educated. Why Picasso painted was just as important as how he painted. This becomes very apparent with Andy Warhol's work. The 'art' of Warhol is much more his motive than his mastery.
Enter to learn.
"Never let school get in the way of your education."
-Dr. Jacobs-
Enter to Learn.
Go forth because your pants fell down, and we didn't like "your tone" when we asked you about it.
School can be a great excuse to avoid an education. "Self effort educates" was inscribe on the archway of my high school's original building. (It is an LDS academy building that was turned over to the state.) A great education comes through dialogue. That interaction with others: be it with the classic works of a discipline, or through debate and discussion in the classroom or blog. It takes a great deal of self effort to engage in dialogue, many times we have to seek out worthy partners or settings. A good educational system would provide you with the tools, resources, and setting for meaningful dialogue. The social institution of education should merely be the starting point of an education.
Specific to higher education my I suggest a couple of starting points:
The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom.
This Book is Not Required, by Inge Bell, Bernard McGrane, and John Gunderson.
I think the problem is even more profound than Pirsig suggests. The problem is that, whether or not the academy is producing leaders, it is producing elites, and many of these elites arrive in positions of authority to enforce the mediocrity and orthodoxy from which they emerged. Their loyalties are not to the community that nurtured and underwrote them, but to the class into which they have been initiated. Thus as George Bernard Shaw wrote in A Doctor's Dilemma, "every profession is a conspiracy against the laity." Conformism and apathy have also given safe harbor to narrower, meaner conspiracies: if you want to get tenure at a state university, you'd better not call the theory of evolution into serious question. You'd better not denounce Kinsey. And you'd better not propose therapies for homosexuality. Where tenure doesn't apply, accreditation and credentialing bring frisky independent thinkers to heel.
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