I have not been following the thread too closely and have not looked
at the links that Miguel provided in the initial thread but I hope that
I
will allowed to make a couple of points:
(1) Does everyone need to go to college to be successful -- however
that is defined and measured? Clearly, no, but it can be extremely
helpful especially if it gives a person an opportunity to be exposed to
information, people, events, art, science, writing, movies, and
perspectives about the world that they would not have come across
if they had not gone to college. As recent economic statistics have
shown, people with some college education (a) tended to earn
more than people without higher education and (b) the unemployment
rate for this group was lower than that of the general population.
They were not immune but did have more options. Perhaps they
have become more adaptable.
(2) In previous threads on Tips I have pointed out that if one uses
level of educational achievement as a proxy for "intelligence", then
there is a negative correlation between educational
achievement/intelligence
and net worth in dollars or other measures of wealth -- Bill Gates
causes the negative relationship because he represents a highly
influential outlier. There are other people who are college dropouts
or have limited education who have through other cognitive, social,
and emotional means (e.g., ruthless opportunism; think Walter White)
become successes. But if one is only interested in making a lot of
money, I am reminded of some dialog from the movie "Citizen Kane""
|Thompson: He made an awful lot of money.
|
|Bernstein: Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money... if what you
|want to do is make a lot of money.
Sometime making a lot of money is easy but often it is difficult
and may require one to do things that one does not like to do or
is morally wrong. Think of the successful people in the tobacco
and petroleum industries.
(3) One significant problem in using examples like Bill Gates and
Steve Jobs as examples of people who dropped out but succeeded
is that people tend to make the fundamental attribution error, that is,
the success is due only because of unique or special characteristics
of these people. This is a comforting fairy tale but it ignores that in
fact an huge number of variables were operating that led to a
sequence of events and opportunities that resulted in success. No
one likes to read about talented, smart people with bold ideas who
failed at their enterprises but these are likely to be far more numerous
than successes. It also shows the operation of the confirmation bias
in the argument stressing the uniqueness of Gates and Jobs.
(4) Finally, one of the points that I stress when I cover Frederic
Bartlett's "War of the Ghosts" study is "what you know determines
what you can understand and remember". If you are a skilled
mnemonist, you can overcome some of these limitations but that
raises the question "what is one trying to show?": how well
memory works or the understanding that one has of the story?
College is supposed to provide opportunities to learn new things
that will increase one's understanding of one's social and physical
world as well as being better able to remember thing and what they
mean. A "liberal arts" education should attempt to provide a
broad knowledge base that will allow one to process future novel
situations in more effective ways. Premature specialization may
lead to success (e.g., in development of computer software and/or
hardware) but may leave one incapable of understanding what
is good or bad, great or trash, in areas outside of their
specialization.
I guess that one can always develop knowledge outside of the
classroom (as an undergraduate I spent time in the library typically
reading material NOT directly relevant to classes but about
topics I was interested in; colleges are, I think, still the best place
to do this, to develop one's knowledge about a subject, either
in the classroom or in self-directed study because that is where
the best resources are available -- this is one of the reasons,
I believe, that many people have considered the central New York
Public Library to be such a critically important resource because
one did not have to have special status like a student at a college
to get access to the resources, it was available to all) but one
may miss other important colleges experiences like the insights
that a good teacher can provide.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
---------- Original Message ------------
On Sun, 08 Sep 2013 07:01:34 -0700,, Edward Pollak (Retired) wrote:
I'm sorry but I don't understand how one can "think critically" without
knowing
a lot facts. I've had too many experiences with 1st year students
thinking that
their thoughts, based on a lack of facts, is as valid as anyone else's
opinion.
My experience is that once you have learned the basic (and often
conflicting)
evidence in a given field, critical thinking comes (almost) as a matter
of
course. It's analogous to what happens with education majors, inundated
with
pedagogy courses but with a dearth of content courses with those pesky
little
facts. What we do NOT need are more teachers wasting time on topics
like
self-esteem, self-regulation, etc. Teach them knowledge!
Your Resident Old Curmudgeon
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