While Americans obsess about the vocational importance of college, they tend to overlook the real importance of a liberal arts education. College should provide students with an opportunity to expand their horizons and their minds (yes, Mr. Sperling). But this expansion is not some sort of vague and shapeless thing. Instead it should be focused and well-directed.
College should help students overcome their parochialism. They need to leave their families and their communities and to experience a new and broader view of the world. This is one of the problems with on-line education. If students never leave their own bedrooms, and take classes they select based on vocational interest, and are never challenged by new subjects or new ideas, this necessary expansion of their perspective cannot take place.
College should provide students with a sense of CONTEXT for their lives. Students should learn about and experience human history, natural and social science, and the great stories of literature and religion. Students should have the opportunity to establish their own sense of purpose and direction within the broader contexts that a liberal arts education provides. In a world of international economic interaction, students need to learn about different cultures. In a world of mass production and cheap goods, students need to learn about individual experience and excellence. In a world of quick fixes and impatience, students need to learn to consider carefully, to reflect, and to work steadily toward valuable goals. Liberal Arts education can help them to do so. "Skills training" (i.e. how to use Word or PowerPoint; how to balance an account sheet; how to solve a math problem) does none of these things.
College should expand the experiences, and the sense of context, and the minds, of students. Without a doubt!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
The "Dumbing Down" of Higher Education
"This is a corporation, not a social entity. Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop their value systems or go in for that 'expand their minds' bullshit." John Sperling, Chair and CEO of The Apollo Group (University of Phoenix)
Peeeyu! Statements like this one purport to be practical, hard-nosed, objective. But they mask a frightening self-centeredness and insularity. Those who make such statements use such dismissive rhetoric in an effort to control and limit the public's sense of its 'best interests.' As long as the corporate system (the "Man") is able to convince people that 'expanding their minds' is a bunch of 'bullshit' and touchy-feely nonsense, it can keep people in their places: unintelligent, basely-driven worker drones serving corporate CEOs who exploit faculty, students, and citizens to serve their own selfish, profit-centered ends. Sperling's comments are, in fact, bullshit. They have no historical or cultural authority. They have no truth-value and no physical referent. They are nonsense masquerading as hard-hitting reality. Their aim, as with all bullshit, is to confuse and disorient listeners.
If a car dealer said:
"this is a business, not a social support group. We don't care about your safety, or comfort, or anything else. We are not here to serve you. We are not into that 'style' or 'excellence' bullshit,"
we would laugh our heads off. Yet the CEO of a billion dollar business can say something very like this and people aren't laughing. Why?
How have we reached the point at which education is seen as "mastery of a skill set" rather than "introduction to the broader possibilities of human experience, to the story of human life on earth, and to ways of thinking effectively about our own experience--and choosing courses of action well--within that broader context"?
Has our imagination been so dumbed down that we accept passive consumption of third-rate popular culture as the new "Good"? That we see no meaning in our own work? That we see education as the first drudging step towards a life of drudging work illuminated only by our financial ability to buy more of that third-rate popular culture?
Truly, education as described by Sperling crosses the line from "inexpensive" into that uglier category: cheap, and cheapening of those who participate in it.
More soon . . .
Peeeyu! Statements like this one purport to be practical, hard-nosed, objective. But they mask a frightening self-centeredness and insularity. Those who make such statements use such dismissive rhetoric in an effort to control and limit the public's sense of its 'best interests.' As long as the corporate system (the "Man") is able to convince people that 'expanding their minds' is a bunch of 'bullshit' and touchy-feely nonsense, it can keep people in their places: unintelligent, basely-driven worker drones serving corporate CEOs who exploit faculty, students, and citizens to serve their own selfish, profit-centered ends. Sperling's comments are, in fact, bullshit. They have no historical or cultural authority. They have no truth-value and no physical referent. They are nonsense masquerading as hard-hitting reality. Their aim, as with all bullshit, is to confuse and disorient listeners.
If a car dealer said:
"this is a business, not a social support group. We don't care about your safety, or comfort, or anything else. We are not here to serve you. We are not into that 'style' or 'excellence' bullshit,"
we would laugh our heads off. Yet the CEO of a billion dollar business can say something very like this and people aren't laughing. Why?
How have we reached the point at which education is seen as "mastery of a skill set" rather than "introduction to the broader possibilities of human experience, to the story of human life on earth, and to ways of thinking effectively about our own experience--and choosing courses of action well--within that broader context"?
Has our imagination been so dumbed down that we accept passive consumption of third-rate popular culture as the new "Good"? That we see no meaning in our own work? That we see education as the first drudging step towards a life of drudging work illuminated only by our financial ability to buy more of that third-rate popular culture?
Truly, education as described by Sperling crosses the line from "inexpensive" into that uglier category: cheap, and cheapening of those who participate in it.
More soon . . .
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