Hi --
And a good two cents they are, too.
I knew that I would generate some discussion with the "not everyone
should go to college" comment, and you raise excellent points.
This is a truly complex issue, and goes to the heart of what education
means in the US today; your comment about education as an intrinsic good
(my words, your sentiment, I trust) having become "quaint" is a serious
issue for all of us who believe it's just plain better to know than to
not.
It isn't that I'd propose keeping people out of school because they lack
the aptitude (or more important, possess the skills required for
learning); it's just that I wonder what we should do? Should liberal
arts educational institutions go the way of the dodo? Should "college"
become what "trade schools" used to be? Is there a place for a
university education that isn't predicated on it being an instrumental
goal, one that is there only for getting a better job? Should we more
and more consider the value of a university education only in terms of
the increased salary one gets by virtue of having one? Is a graduate
degree becoming what a BA used to be?
After reading your note I'd have to consider myself an educational
Luddite (or something like that), holding fast to an old and now quaint
(a good word for it) idea that education is something that is good in
itself, that makes more informed citizens, that makes individual lives
richer. I'm a big fan of ideas; ideas can change the world, and if we
don't teach ideas rather than just skills, I get worried. Going to
college quite literally changed my life in ways I find difficult to
express; it was changed not because of the particular things I learned
(as might happen with a preprofessional degree), but rather that I
learned to value learning.
Am I, one so young yet, already a dinosaur?
What's going to become of us?
I hope this thread stays alive. I'm truly curious about what education
in the US is going to become, and talking with educators about it might
assuage some of my fears (or, on the other hand, might just exacerbate
them!). I'd like to know what educators think.
So: What is education about? Are small, liberal arts institutions going
to go away? Is education ever going to be valued again for its own
sake? Did we really sign up to teach high school? (Not that I don't
value high school educators! I just don't think I have the stamina to
do it.)
Again, thanks for your comments; they pointed out a whole other issue.
m
--
Marc Carter
Baker University Department of Psychology
Assistant Professor, Itinerant Scientist,
Inveterate Skeptic, Former Surfer.
---
The test of our progress is not whether we add more
to the abundance of those who have much;
it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
----- Franklin Roosevelt
-------------------------------------
Bike __o
to _`\<,_
Work! (_)/ (_)
-------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Okami [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 9:28 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
Subject: Re: improving student performance and grades through extra
credit?
Marc's was a most thoughtful message. I would like to address the part
where he suggests that some people "just shouldn't be in college."
I taught for most of my ten year teaching career at UCLA, first both in
the Psych department, where the average grade is C, and the
Communication Studies department, where the average grade is B or B+ and
almost as many students get A as B. But I've also taught at Community
Colleges and non-traditional colleges, and right now I'm teaching a few
classes at Neumann college in Pennsylvania, a Franciscan institution
that prides itself on taking students who averaged C or D in high school
and "giving them a chance" to make it in college I should add that I
entered academia late in life--I'm 56 now, so I did most of my
undergraduate work in the 1960s.
I'm giving this long preamble for a reason. Having taken college
classes 40 years ago, and having taught both the elite and the low-end
of college students currently, I have given a lot of thought to changes
in the quality of education over the years. I have seen the level of
education in institutions shift radically. The quality of work in
contemporary undergraduate institutions is similar to the quality that
was expected of students of my generation in high school. The first
year or two of graduate school now resemble undergraduate work of 40
years ago (I did my graduate work at UCLA, by the way). Moreover, there
are many, many students enrolled in colleges currently who could never
have been accepted 40 years ago.
>From my teacher's perspective, I find it frustrating (maddening,
actually) to teach under these circumstances, especially freshman
classes. Students come in with no interest whatever in learning
anything at all, lacking curiosity, hostile and sullen, maintaining that
"Us vs. Them (teachers)"
demeanor characteristic of high school students. (I admit that I didn't
teach freshman at UCLA very often, so this may not be the case there,
but I suspect it is.)
However, looking at things more objectively, I can see that the entire
purpose of college has changed over the decades, and what is happening
is probably unavoidable, and perhaps (?) necessary. Colleges have
become trade schools because trades have become more complex and more
technological.
People need to know more things to go to work than they used to.
Employers won't hire people who have not demonstrated the qualities that
are necessary for success in college. Liberal Arts have become
increasingly marginal and considered by many (not by me) to be
unnecessary. The notion that learning for its own sake is valuable is
now quaint.
So keeping people out of college because they lack intellectual skills
or aptitude is a very different act now than it was 40 years ago. 40
years ago, such people could still look forward to useful employment and
careers in areas that do not require higher learning. This is no longer
true. The whole purpose of college has changed, and so the quality of
student, and expectations teachers have of students have also changed.
My two cents.
Paul Okami
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