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You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
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Classical education sought to encourage students to wrestle with questions designed to force them to examine their livesTHE CRITICAL ROLE OF EDUCATION ULTIMATE R&D: EDUCATION If we are to avoid a citizenry of idiots, education will have to play a decisive role. But we seem confused as to what that role should be. At one end of the spectrum, the focus of education can be the individual’s development of those foundational skills and attitudes that will enable him to realize his potential (Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Dewey, Piaget). At the other end, it can be the specific skills that are currently prized by society and can best contribute to the collective (Plato, Locke, Fichte). Not only are we unclear as to what is the role of education, but at times we seem unsure whether it has any value at all. On the positive side of the ledger, formal education has made important contributions. It has provided the foundation in culture, skills and values that enables individuals to live within and contribute to society. In addition, “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.” (Arie De Geus, in Senge, The Fifth Discipline.) But on the negative side, the short-term economic contribution of education to the individual is negative, and the long-term contribution can be measured only indirectly, as in the expected incremental earnings associated with a high school diploma or an advanced degree. Moreover, even on such a measure the net present value of education is minimal (The New York Times Almanac 2000, p. 352). So it is not surprising that education, our most important R&D, should be shortchanged by laissez faire. Cultural factors exacerbate our tendency to undervalue education. Since our colonial days, from Ichabod Crane on, we have held teachers in low esteem, unlike the near reverence in which they are held in Europe and democratic Asia. The saying “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach,” reflects a uniquely American attitude that while honoring the practical, rejects the philosophical associated with our European forebears. This is a far cry from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who understood the need for the theoretical, even the philosophical, and who sought to marry theory and practicality. A marriage of the philosophical and the practical lies at the heart of classical education. In the golden age of Greece, education was viewed as the development of the complete person, mentally, physically, spiritually. It addressed character as well as knowledge. Paideia, the classical Greek notion of education, encompassed art, poetry, philosophy, science, and civic responsibility. Its aim was the development of the ideal person (humanitas): spiritual, cultured, capable, with a broad foundation of skills and interests. For Socrates, education was primarily moral in scope and was designed to start by awakening people to how little they really know. The ends of education were the stimulation of the desire to learn, the nurturing of courage to question and examine, and the development of an open, yet critical, mind. Cicero, influenced by Greek thought, claimed that all creatures other than humans have a final cause, a pre-ordained end or essential nature, into which they naturally develop. In humans the final cause is left incomplete. It is up to education to provide direction. Contemporary scientists express the same idea in different language. “Virtually no serious natural scientist speaks about genes and environment any longer as if they were opposed. Indeed, every serious investigator accepts the importance of both biological and cultural factors and the need to understand their interactions. Genes regulate all human behavior, but no form of behavior will emerge without the appropriate environmental triggers or supports. Learning alters the way in which genes are expressed.” (Howard Gardner, “Cracking Open the IQ Box,” The American Prospect, Winter, 1994.) Widely different cultures have prized education for its role in providing direction. The Chinese ideograph for “education” combines “question” and “study.” Respected Chinese scholars, like the classical Greeks, saw education as an ongoing process of questioning and studying, continually refining one’s direction. This differs from the prevailing contemporary view of education as formal training that in itself transforms one into an educated person, an end. The traditional view sees education as integral to human development, enabling people to change themselves in important ways, as opposed to an adjunct focused on marketable skills. It embraces the Socratic dictum: “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” This contrasts to our present focus, stuffing information into the crevices of a mind. There is a thread of the classical view in our own tradition. John Dewey saw education as an ongoing process, a means to enable people to realize their latent potential. But it is rare to see such a view put into practice because a conflicting view developed at the same time as Dewey’s, one more preoccupied with the bottom line. In the early twentieth century a new vision of education became fashionable, influenced by the success of assembly line manufacturing. Its methods were to be the newly discovered methods of industry that had dramatically increased efficiency. The extension of assembly line concepts to education embodied a view of education as training to be accomplished at minimal cost. Teachers were the assembly line workers in the education factory, and students were the product to be turned out as rapidly, cheaply and efficiently as possible. (The application to education of the dubious wisdom of Frederick Taylor — those areas to which his methodology best applies are just those areas in which people could be most easily replaced by machines — is critically discussed in Raymond Callahan’s Education and the Cult of Efficiency.) A contemporary variation on this theme is on-line education (e-ducation), presently focused on higher education, but readily extended to lower grades. Led by the “buzz” words “technology,” “efficiency” and “profitability,” the driving force behind this movement is the prospect of leveraging eminent professors’ lecture material, offering it over the Internet to students who could download it at their leisure. In this manner a single professor could reach many thousands of students. Assignments would be graded by low-paid instructors, and the enterprise, saving on bricks and mortar and on salaries, could be highly profitable. A 1998 Coopers and Lybrand report claims technology can replace not only college campuses, but faculty. This mass production paradigm could change the very nature of education. On-line education resembles the correspondence courses that proliferated more than a century ago. These courses fostered profitable correspondence schools, and in the late 1800s they were thought to be the future of education. But contrary to expectations, they did little to either improve quality of education or extend education to a significantly wider audience. The purported advantages of e-ducation are just the same as those of correspondence education: the convenience of the students, the ability to leverage lectures of a few super-star professors, the freedom from expensive college campuses and tenured faculty, and the resulting profits. So are the disadvantages. A University of Illinois study noted that the time needed to respond to queries by e-mail would make e-ducation — if it were to be handled responsibly — more labor intensive than conventional education. More important, the lack of interaction with faculty and other students would deprive e-students of the environment and practice necessary to build a foundation in essential skills of dialogue and critical thinking. (It is possible, but far from certain, that forums, chat rooms and teleconferences could remedy this.) If we are not overawed by the technology, we can see that e-ducation is virtually identical to the old correspondence courses. The only difference between them is that the material is delivered via the Internet as opposed to the postal system. The factors that had discredited correspondence education should equally discredit e-ducation; but because of our infatuation with technology and the potential for profits, we have ignored them. One of the issues implicit in e-ducation is the distinction between teaching and training. Advocates of on-line education typically envision courses designed to prepare students for careers by training them in requisite skills and certifying that they have mastered those skills. (Note that a well-crafted text supplemented with paradigmatic problems carefully worked out could train as effectively. All the on-line program could add would be the certification. And how much should we pay for that, when we could certify delimited technical competence by standardized tests?) To the extent that our sole interest is technical competence, an on-line approach might suffice. But historically, at least, the role of education has been broader and deeper. To put it bluntly, in The Odyssey Circe, the sorceress, changed Odysseus’s crew into pigs. Suppose those pigs were happy. Suppose they possessed important “professional” skills, perhaps truffle hunting, that insured they would be well treated and even pampered. Is that all there is to life? Not even the most sophisticated career training deals with this. Nor is it plausible, despite the attention philosophers, novelists and poets have given to this and related matters, that it could be handled effectively without the personal interaction characteristic of the traditional college environment. These issues, an important part of education, if not training, require a more traditional approach. Classical education sought to encourage students to wrestle with questions designed to force them to examine their lives and their values. In this way it aspired to enable students to recognize and adopt positive values, to develop wisdom, and to live more meaningful lives. Unfortunately, the bottom line profit center approach to education is incompatible with these traditional ideals. Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind) argues passionately that even the traditional colleges have turned their backs on these ideals. They have lost sight of the purposes and priorities of higher education. They value information more than knowledge. They value knowledge more than wisdom. Without a rudder, they have drifted toward a simple accommodation of career goals, training students to master skills presently prized by future employers. In doing so they have set themselves up for on-line education. Elevating the efficiency of vocational training over the more painstaking exploration of values has left universities open to the promise of an even more efficient training — in this case one that bypasses the university. Despite its purported efficiency, this paradigm falls short. It is not just that the factory floor view of education as the efficient training of a workforce is far removed from classical ideals. This approach to maximizing efficiency can be short sighted in providing adequate vocational training; for even good training may require a sound foundation. A mid-century incident bears this out. In the 1950s, the MIT approach to electrical engineering was regarded by industry with a jaundiced eye. Rather than providing hands-on experience with vacuum tubes, MIT concentrated on theoretical issues concerning the generation of wave patterns. Graduates were relatively unfamiliar with the electronic devices of the day and could not contribute immediately to the top or bottom lines of their employers. In the short term, they were an economic drag. It was the transistor revolution that turned things upside down. Within a few years vacuum tubes nearly disappeared, transistors taking their place. It was soon apparent that the traditional curriculum did little to help graduates understand transistors. Even conventional industrial-training advocates realized there might be some point in approaching technology education from a more generalized, foundational perspective. Within a few years, most electrical engineering programs in the country were patterning themselves on the MIT approach. This lesson favors a classical approach to education. So does the development of modern information technology. As it becomes easier and cheaper to access information through computer databases, understanding and creativity become more important than mere factual knowledge. In cultivating competent individuals, it is less important to fill them full of information. It is more important to refine their skills in locating and defining problems, posing penetrating questions, expressing ideas clearly. In teaching them to address real problems it is valuable to hone their abilities to consider less obvious paradigms and perceive interrelationships among apparently disparate phenomena. In helping them fulfill their potential, it is necessary to kindle a flame, to inspire them to find what they love and to be creative. In building a foundation for them to function as citizens, it is essential to develop a commitment to society and the quality of life of those even beyond immediate family and friends. These are mutually interrelated skills, propensities and attitudes, rather than bits of information. As such, they are difficult to measure and more difficult to teach. They require a more patient assessment and a greater investment of time and effort. Yet we have barely moved in this direction. At all levels our education is focused on training. Even after an undergraduate education plus a graduate degree, few Americans are literate in both arts and sciences. Rarely does understanding extend past one art or one science. We miss a lot. Much of graduate education focuses on applying the tools of one’s field to those types of problems that can be readily solved. A doctoral dissertation is typically an attempt to utilize a range of standard techniques and problemsolving skills in defining and solving a delimited problem. Nor is this confined to the sciences. In Biblical studies one may apply archaeology, regional history, comparative linguistics, and the decay of radioactive isotopes to date and interpret an ancient text. The development of sophisticated problem-solving skills is valuable, not only in the context of the discipline in which they are learned but also because these skills can be transferred across disciplines. This is important because it is often difficult to be creative in one’s original field of study. Training involves learning what sorts of problems can be solved as well as how to set them up and solve them in terms of the traditional paradigms. This makes it difficult to consider problems from alternative perspectives and develop new paradigms. |
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