A Crisis of Competence (Education)

http://www.nas.org/images/documents/...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.

As someone who did that 4 year humanities degree, I know what you are saying.

The only bit I disagree about is the indoctrination. I always found that I was taught about all the different schools of thought, and if could make a good case for what I was saying then I got good marks.

Maybe UK higher education institutions are less polarised than US one?

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

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.

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That might be a hard sell, unfortunately. It seems a lot of people are pushing against that future, and still want college to be a place where every kid is supposed to strive for, even if they want a liberal arts education.

CR

I will say there is at least "attempted" indoctrination in many cases, but college kids are adults and can refuse it. The problem I say many years ago is that the biggest "indoctrinaters" were always the aggressive professors who would try to call you out in public to shame you, or would say things that were outright outrageous in class I think to see if anyone would stand up to them, and in most cases, no one did, so the next class they would get even worse, It is hard to argue with someone who ulitmately controls your grade and behaves like a condascending jerk

But I just think the infdoctrination isjust attempted, however, I also think this is why so many professors are opposed to you recording them in class :)

Universitites have become businesses, businesses that exist to keep themselves alive. I cannot spek for other states, but right now if I enroll in either of my Big 12 univrsities, all of the "exxcellence" fees are 50% of a full time tuition rate, they do not change based on courseload, so essentially if I take 1 class I am paying more in "excellence" fees than I am in tuition, with part time I break even. This is absolutely absurd, especially if you consider how much of that is activity budget fees for activities I do not participate in, and things like computer lab fees for computer labs I do not use....

I safely disregard this piece as old people whining and put it in the bin.

Some teachers are bad, but assign good books which end up redeeming the class. I had one prof who made me realize that "screeching feminist" referred to an actual tone of voice, but we read "a strange defeat", "survival in auswitch", and "homage to catalonia" and watched "triumph of the will" and "the eternal jew" so I got plenty out of the class. But obviously I could have gotten those for free on youtube and from the library. And equally obviously, I in no way finished my education on "European history from 1900-1950" by virtue of that class.

There are plenty of good teachers, but I think I could have done just as well by finding some good stuff to read on the subject. At best the lecture makes things easy to grasp in a short time. Online lectures can do that just as well, and I really think the discussion board is far superior for talking about stuff than the classroom, where debate is restricted by the in person social environment and the need for brevity and improvisation...

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

I safely disregard this piece as old people whining and put it in the bin.

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Your honorary diploma from Berkeley is in the mail.

So far, most of my non-science classes seem to have been fairly balanced without too much teacher input on the "right" opinion. Most of the time, they mentioned several approaches to the subject.

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

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

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It does here. A requirement before undertaking honours in ancient history here is to complete a course on historiography which spends a semester teaching the philosophy of history which in itself obviously requires a knowledge of philosophy. The current system does a good job at weeding out the weakest people who would never make it in an academic environment. Without teh will to read more than just what you are required to you really won't get that far anyway.

Is the crisis purely in 3rd level Humanities though I did engineering and without going into boring details sems to me the crisis begins in 1st level.

All sorts of problems then connected with your early school largely continue into 2nd level any problems from there then pop up in 3rd level.

I'm thinking of things like

Textspeak in a written thesis
poor reading ability
without detailed instructions people can be stumped
also people have plenty opinions that could be seen as faulty before they get to college

I bet the list could go on and on and on

People can hide these well and make it too college especially where the system is blind to prevent favoritism.

In my experience, it is less the teachers doing the indoctrinating and more the activist students. I will say that my opinion might be off since
A. I have not finished reading the article.
B. I am a STEM major, so I don't really have experience with liberal arts professors beyond general education requirements.

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

In my experience, it is less the teachers doing the indoctrinating and more the activist students. I will say that my opinion might be off since
A. I have not finished reading the article.
B. I am a STEM major, so I don't really have experience with liberal arts professors beyond general education requirements.

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Most sensible people ignore them.

Maths is a language, an intellectual weight system, a sphere of music beyond physical instruments.

It can be taught well or poorly, it does depend on the student and texts. It is best understood first with real world forms such as geometry. I'm not convinced everyone can do Schrodingers equations.

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Parents and mentors seem to be a missing ingredient. They certainly have an impact on the early part of learning, they can also inspire in the later.

In the science course I attended we had to do at least one communications unit. The English tutors were astounded how much questions we had and how much we would approach them on equal terms and debate ideas. The tutors were perplexed, some were not amused and they brought it up with our Physics lecturers. The physics lecturers reply was that they teach science students the fundamentals and to ask the question why?, including everything they teach, to reinstill the curiosity that children have. That included questioning authourity.

So in IMDHO facts rock, but you've got to test them. Maybe all students need to do science and not just the philosophy of it. Then you'd see students with backbone questioning their lecturers.

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What I would like to be able to do is see a Gutenberg online mixed with a true online university. The Khan Academy is fine for kids.

I'm sure we could put together recommended online reading materials and discuss the content ourselves as a last resort. Amp up the Monestary!