I've given up teaching in universities. They have failed to find the real aims of education and perhaps were always to elitist to be fit for this purpose. Education is increasingly a vile, trillion-dollar international business - though I'm very grateful to our local primary school for its efforts locally - I'd find it hard to fault a magnificent, caring staff. Yet I would advocate a 'de-schooling' in order that we could all start learning work across the globe. I make the proviso that this would have to include armed services working on a democratic basis - a massive problem. I took a stance that university education can be technical - but that this has to be in a wider context of trying to do something decent with lives and the planet - maybe further in my wilder sci-fi dreams. One key element concerns teaching people how to learn - this containing an obvious element about how we come to know what best to teach, an argument very similar to 'who polices the police'?
There are no 'blank slates' to teach - even in primary schools. Kids come from a variety of backgrounds, often very problematic - whether from poverty or wealth. One issue in deciding what education is about is the way in which routes through privileged schools and universities exist and attract parents prepared to pay very high fees. This applies across the globe. In this model 'education' retains its Greek origin 'to make like a Duke' - something very elitist and to do with the sham of meritocracy. Parents believe this privileged form of education gives great advantages - in the UK you only have to look at the success of public schools and elite universities in placing students in professions - a royal route also found in the more 'egalitarian' France (the book had 'the making of a European business elite' in the title). I doubt there is any connection between 'intelligence-talent' and success in this system - but such meritocracy is only part of what we should be trying to do and should not lead to the 'success' it does in any case. Even most university students have little clue (even on graduation) on intrapersonal intelligence (to some extent Orn's intraspection), how to keep learning about insight on skills and the lack of them in the area. They can't really do research either and will mostly have actively avoided it. There are frequent claims in class that to be taught independent thinking and 'finding out' only leads them into conflict with the 'hymn sheet singing' employers expect. It's almost impossible to teach anything of value, other than what can be used technically, either in a science (not many jobs) or as a functionary (lawyer, accountant, manager, teacher ...) serving interests not to be questioned. To be teaching at all in a university one is already a functionary and already not 'universal' in the sense that one's duties are limited. With the Internet, we should be able to make great strides in creating a free and easily searchable resource for people to learn on their own - our learned papers should be available to all (most are actually so vapid no one would want them, which is why they remain so 'secret' - laughably available at great cost and often mere plagiarism or as dumb as 'Chicken Soup for the Soul'). Most university teaching is now located somewhere near what a grammar school 5th form used to get. I would want people to explore 'what motivates you, what do you think motivates others, how might we improve matters' (we can all do this) - yet this collapses to 'critically evaluate process and content theories of motivation at work'. The answer to this latter is much more simple (find the answer in the text book your tutor has given you and from which her lectures are delivered using notes from the publisher). We basically rank and grade on this copying ability. I might set an apparently more complex question that appears radical. 'Critically evaluate Foucauldian Accounting's Contribution to the Deconstruction of World Bank Policy' - but this is just the same in some ways as a shrewd student can find the 'answer' in another text book. A colleague once announced his students had finally discovered Gramsci was the answer to everything (and nothing) in one module - they had simply shrewdly assessed the lecturer's preferences. He was asking me to remark a brilliant paper zeroed by the lecturer which equated Margaret Thatcher and Gramsci - actually excellent parallels - the lecturer merely annoyed his idol had been exposed. Beyond this we should be out of the classrooms doing stuff - or at least organising our students in doing stuff - creating some kind of valid economy of people doing worthwhile stuff and learning where most learning takes place - in action. Instead we have a sickening 'Chinese Bureaucracy' of temporary bookishness. I always wonder what right I have to teach, what knowledges - yet no such 'reflection' takes place in regard to the world on offer to work in - even as we see it burning the planet and with no answer to pre-historic problems of war, greed and survival. I feel like a chemist making great discoveries, only for them to be poured into a festering septic tank! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
