07.21.04
Posted in education at 9:16 am by
Zach, in yesterday’s comments, jumped a bit ahead of me. His main point, if I understand it correctly, was that more than just encouraging students to find where they “should” be whether college, tradeschool, or an apprenticeship with a tradeswoman, we need to be about training students to love learning! I agreed wholeheartedly.
I think that the higher educational environment bears the dirty marks of students who no longer care to learn, really. Today’s college students seem to display a real disdain for work. Unfortunately, it’s not just today’s college students, it’s yesterday’s as well.
You see, for a while this country has steadily lowered the bar to meet the student’s expectations about how hard their degree should be to attain. Their expectation was that it shouldn’t be hard at all, it was an entitlement. After all, these students come to college and pay what is to them an obscene amount of money–they at least deserve a degree right? I guess that’s what you get in a capitalist society. We’d trained our students that you pay for goods and services, so, it would stand to reason that all that needs to be done in college is to pay tuition and the student then recieves a service.
College isn’t the supermarket, though. One can’t simply walk through the aisle and say one day, “Hmmm…a physics degree, now that looks nice, and some philosophy on the side” and then go check out. (Actually, while it is true that right now one can’t do this…this would seem the logical progression of a higher educational system such as our own. This frightens me.)
Going to college should be a bit like hiring a personal trainer. Hiring this person to personally train you can drastically improve one’s body, however, you still have to be committed to working hard for that exeptional transformation to take place. Many in American higher education have lost sight of this truth.
Probably, this has happened in part because of the point that Zach brought up yesterday. Students no longer have a zeal to learn. College is simply another step, no, step is the wrong word–hurdle. Just Pat, again in yesterday’s comments posted a wonderful Henri Nouwen quote that I’ll share here:
“As teachers, we have even become insensitive to the ridiculous situation in which adult men and women feel that they owe us a paper of at least twenty pages. We have lost our sense of surprise when men and women who are taking courses about the questions of life and death anxiously ask us how much is required. Instead of spending a number of free years searching for the value and meaning of our human existence with the help of others who expressed their own experiences in word or writing, most students are constantly trying to earn credits, degrees and awards, willing to sacrifice even their own growth.”(Henri J. M. Nouwen; Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life; copyright 1975; pg 84, 85)
This perfectly illustrates what’s happened, in my mind at least, to higher education (in some cases) in the states. Teachers, professors have lived up to their students too low expectations. The product–a degree, yes, but one that means almost nothing.
This leads to the “what next” question. After a student has a degree that means almost nothing and has few if any real skills what are they to do? Graduate school, of course.
Stay tuned tomorrow for more thoughts on education.
Permalink
Trackback URL »
http://www.badchristian.com/2004/07/21/college_entitlement_and_lies/trackback/
Posted in education at 9:16 am by
Zach, in yesterday’s comments, jumped a bit ahead of me. His main point, if I understand it correctly, was that more than just encouraging students to find where they “should” be whether college, tradeschool, or an apprenticeship with a tradeswoman, we need to be about training students to love learning! I agreed wholeheartedly.
I think that the higher educational environment bears the dirty marks of students who no longer care to learn, really. Today’s college students seem to display a real disdain for work. Unfortunately, it’s not just today’s college students, it’s yesterday’s as well.
You see, for a while this country has steadily lowered the bar to meet the student’s expectations about how hard their degree should be to attain. Their expectation was that it shouldn’t be hard at all, it was an entitlement. After all, these students come to college and pay what is to them an obscene amount of money–they at least deserve a degree right? I guess that’s what you get in a capitalist society. We’d trained our students that you pay for goods and services, so, it would stand to reason that all that needs to be done in college is to pay tuition and the student then recieves a service.
College isn’t the supermarket, though. One can’t simply walk through the aisle and say one day, “Hmmm…a physics degree, now that looks nice, and some philosophy on the side” and then go check out. (Actually, while it is true that right now one can’t do this…this would seem the logical progression of a higher educational system such as our own. This frightens me.)
Going to college should be a bit like hiring a personal trainer. Hiring this person to personally train you can drastically improve one’s body, however, you still have to be committed to working hard for that exeptional transformation to take place. Many in American higher education have lost sight of this truth.
Probably, this has happened in part because of the point that Zach brought up yesterday. Students no longer have a zeal to learn. College is simply another step, no, step is the wrong word–hurdle. Just Pat, again in yesterday’s comments posted a wonderful Henri Nouwen quote that I’ll share here:
“As teachers, we have even become insensitive to the ridiculous situation in which adult men and women feel that they owe us a paper of at least twenty pages. We have lost our sense of surprise when men and women who are taking courses about the questions of life and death anxiously ask us how much is required. Instead of spending a number of free years searching for the value and meaning of our human existence with the help of others who expressed their own experiences in word or writing, most students are constantly trying to earn credits, degrees and awards, willing to sacrifice even their own growth.”(Henri J. M. Nouwen; Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life; copyright 1975; pg 84, 85)
This perfectly illustrates what’s happened, in my mind at least, to higher education (in some cases) in the states. Teachers, professors have lived up to their students too low expectations. The product–a degree, yes, but one that means almost nothing.
This leads to the “what next” question. After a student has a degree that means almost nothing and has few if any real skills what are they to do? Graduate school, of course.
Stay tuned tomorrow for more thoughts on education.
Permalink
Trackback URL »
http://www.badchristian.com/2004/07/21/college_entitlement_and_lies/trackback/
Zachary said,
July 21, 2004 at 12:02 pm
Right on! I knew I liked ya.