I really began thinking/learning about our education system about a year in a half ago in my curiosity for strategists class. We were instructed to pick anything…a person, religion, idea, sports team, occupation, etc., learn about it for a term, and present our findings. I chose to investigate education systems + mainly focused on the various types of school curricula structure and methods: traditional, home schooling, Montessori, unschooling, etc.
This year, I continued my education study through the cultural anthropology investigation I conducted. Rather than structure + methods, I chose to focus my attention on curricula content and spent quite some time thinking about the validity and practical use of what we “learn” in school.
Last week, I watched a TED talk given by Liz Coleman. The main takeaway: there are repercussions of current over-simplified education curricula – rather than narrow areas of study, perhaps the best education includes cross-disciplinary + hands-on methods. hmm. interesting idea…
So, last night I found myself at probably the most stereo-typical Eugene college party I’ve ever been to in my life. Last weekend in Eugene…better late than never, right? Anyway, the way I see it, there are three main types of Eugene house parties: the sorority/fraternity Greek themed / keg race parties, regular house parties, or SoCal/hippie/’dude’/vinal records/chill hang-out parties. I was at the 3rd type last night. …but I digress.
Anyway, the point is, I ended up talking to this kid traveling to Ecuador next term to do volunteer work. He told me the reason he’s going is because he wants to be able to finally apply his knowledge to an actual … THING. (this is where the lightbulb turned on in my head!) We then spent quite some time discussing what we saw as the biggest disconnect in public school education – we learn about alot…but that’s where it ends. And that’s an incomplete education in my opinion. We need to be taught…and need to be practicing a practical…and actual application to what we are learning in school. This system we’re using now basically is basically saying…teach the kids everything they need to know for 16+ years…but in this curriculum, do not include opportunities that actually allows students to apply their new found knowledge! Eurkea! (except NOT!) Doesn’t sound like a very smart idea to me (=
So this morning I read this article from Good (titled: the grad school brain dead)- my main takeaway: I now understand why grad. school is not in my immediate future. Pigeonholing all grad. school programs into broad categorization aside, check out the follow snippets from the article:
A larger percentage of young, inventive, creative folk will enter an almost-bankrupt (to follow Taylor’s Detroit metaphor) graduate system. Most will not get teaching jobs. Many will never finish their dissertations. They will go into debt. And they will be trained to think deeply about an increasingly narrow range of ideas intelligible to only a few others. They will become increasingly unable to enter into conversations with colleagues, not to mention those outside the academy.
Academia over-specialized. The faculty lounge is silent, or is repurposed into a computer lab set up with 18 separate work stations. Non-academics deem the goings-on inside the gates uninteresting to those outside it (who wants a radio show on universities? Yawn). The result? No one, inside, outside, or over the ever thickening firewall between the two, is talking to anybody.
…so…what do you guys think? Is this really an issue with our public education, or just a handful of people with some crazy/extreme ideas?
I could NOT agree more. See you in the real world, KK baby!
“…rather than narrow areas of study, perhaps the best education includes cross-disciplinary + hands-on methods…”
This is in line with what I’ve seen in every field of study, from spirituality, quantum physics, biology, geology, architecture, city planning, to chemistry: “intertwingleness”, where every knowledge about every subject is implicitly connected to each other.
The good ones will understand this principle and use it to further the understanding of and optimize work they do—and make a living in the meantime
The great ones will expose these implicit connections and find ways to make it explicit. Many new fields are born this way. For instance, the subject of modern advertising was crystalized when the implicit needs between product distribution and store merchants was made obvious.
I do agree, but then I don’t. For instance, how are we going to fix our education system? Does everyone just stop going to grad school and we stop having professors and universities and research? What would that mean? Which programs are most applicable to a system like ours and which are not? When does experience override studies and is it possible for the two to occur simultaneously?
I don’t disagree with the idea of graduate school so much as I disagree with our applications of knowledge. That is where I think you are right on. But we need to have people who specialize in certain things– why people aren’t talking to each other is beyond me. So maybe this means our undergrad needs to be more diverse, or we need earlier training to help us listen better to one another and not belittle people who are genuinely curious about our topics of interest.
I think what bothers me the most are those who do attend graduate programs and think that their time spent in school should equal high pay– where is the value in that? What are they in it for? WHO MAKES THESE RULES?! haha