Sasaki Kojiro
04-21-2012, 06:46
http://www.nas.org/images/documents/A_Crisis_of_Competence.pdf
Long paper by the NAS (conservative group) about the sad state of our universities. It's a good paper even though they predictably focus entirely on problems caused by the political radicalism. I think that's just a symptom though. We are simply deluding ourselves.
In math, you can start out teaching kids about numbers, and then arithmatic, and then algebra and then geometry and then calculus and so on. It's pretty easy to get high schoolers to the point where they know more math than geniuses of the past did. How well students do depends on their IQ, how hard they work, and somewhat on the quality of the teacher. It's pretty easy to get teach, and it's pretty easy to teach someone how to teach it.
History is nothing at all like that. There's a very small number of people in the world who have a true grasp of events like the French Revolution and can actually teach that. Even the people who know enough to write books on it often end up writing crap. It's absurd to think that we have enough high school teachers who can really teach the stuff, especially since they usually cover 'European History" in a year, or something like that. There aren't enough college teachers either, often they just know a narrow sliver. If you want to learn history, you pretty much have to be into it enough to read a bunch of books on your own. But who's going to write the books? There has to be some historians. So we have colleges where people major in history. They learn from scholars and historians how to be scholars and historians themselves. All well and good.
But wait. What on earth does that have to do with our colleges? People take 4 years of history and get a "liberal arts" degree and then go get a job. What on earth for? Any true liberal arts education would include just as much philosophy and literature as history, and in no way requires a professor. At best, online video lectures from the best historians, broadcast to millions, would be a good supplement.
We have the delusion that we can train people into having a humanities education in the way that we can in the sciences. This isn't remotely true. So what's the natural result? Many professors view their students as people they can bring in line with their politics, and many students go along eagerly. Many people have no real interest in the humanities and simply view their education as an ornament on their moral codpiece. They view college as a place to have fun with "the college experience" and classes as mostly a chore. They are happy to be told they are now part of the intellectual class and that if they just read the right newspapers they will continue being smarter than everyone else.
Fortunately the future looks fairly bright. Tuition is going up and up while it's becoming obvious to most people that the quality of education is going down. The system is do for a shake up. Hopefully in the future we can accept the fact that higher education is for STEM students and future scholars, and that people who simply want an education can get it through books, the new online lectures, and arguing with people on webforums and blogs. Perhaps people will work part time for a while after high school and actually experience the world while they are getting their education. The smart kids can learn enough in a year or two to impress their interviewer and get hired. The dumb ones won't be able to fake their way into a job with a degree they got by taking cheap classes from professors who give an A to anyone who agrees with their political opinions.
Long paper by the NAS (conservative group) about the sad state of our universities. It's a good paper even though they predictably focus entirely on problems caused by the political radicalism. I think that's just a symptom though. We are simply deluding ourselves.
In math, you can start out teaching kids about numbers, and then arithmatic, and then algebra and then geometry and then calculus and so on. It's pretty easy to get high schoolers to the point where they know more math than geniuses of the past did. How well students do depends on their IQ, how hard they work, and somewhat on the quality of the teacher. It's pretty easy to get teach, and it's pretty easy to teach someone how to teach it.
History is nothing at all like that. There's a very small number of people in the world who have a true grasp of events like the French Revolution and can actually teach that. Even the people who know enough to write books on it often end up writing crap. It's absurd to think that we have enough high school teachers who can really teach the stuff, especially since they usually cover 'European History" in a year, or something like that. There aren't enough college teachers either, often they just know a narrow sliver. If you want to learn history, you pretty much have to be into it enough to read a bunch of books on your own. But who's going to write the books? There has to be some historians. So we have colleges where people major in history. They learn from scholars and historians how to be scholars and historians themselves. All well and good.
But wait. What on earth does that have to do with our colleges? People take 4 years of history and get a "liberal arts" degree and then go get a job. What on earth for? Any true liberal arts education would include just as much philosophy and literature as history, and in no way requires a professor. At best, online video lectures from the best historians, broadcast to millions, would be a good supplement.
We have the delusion that we can train people into having a humanities education in the way that we can in the sciences. This isn't remotely true. So what's the natural result? Many professors view their students as people they can bring in line with their politics, and many students go along eagerly. Many people have no real interest in the humanities and simply view their education as an ornament on their moral codpiece. They view college as a place to have fun with "the college experience" and classes as mostly a chore. They are happy to be told they are now part of the intellectual class and that if they just read the right newspapers they will continue being smarter than everyone else.
Fortunately the future looks fairly bright. Tuition is going up and up while it's becoming obvious to most people that the quality of education is going down. The system is do for a shake up. Hopefully in the future we can accept the fact that higher education is for STEM students and future scholars, and that people who simply want an education can get it through books, the new online lectures, and arguing with people on webforums and blogs. Perhaps people will work part time for a while after high school and actually experience the world while they are getting their education. The smart kids can learn enough in a year or two to impress their interviewer and get hired. The dumb ones won't be able to fake their way into a job with a degree they got by taking cheap classes from professors who give an A to anyone who agrees with their political opinions.