my latest business enterprise with my sweetheart takes me to college and university campuses all over bc and alberta. while this is only our first week actively on the job, i have noticed a few things.
1) many university students look 12.
2) many university students act 12.
3) there is grave concern on the part of instructors over the vigorously burgeoning stupidity, from year to year, of first year students. universities have begun to offer remedial courses, and to consciously dumb down their existing classes to avoid needing to fail so many of their "clients."
4) evidence of this is everywhere at UVic in the form of shockingly simple bristol board "projects" all over the walls of departments. at first i thought it was a Science Thing: that because you get to play with rocks and bugs and formaldehyded frogs, you also get to use coloured markers and cut up magazine photos rather than employ overhead projectors and powerpoint in your presentations like everyone else who has graduated from junior high. but then i realised that it's not just a science thing -- the business department, languages, environmental studies, history -- all plastered with photos of malaysia and terrible, simple, hand-drawn graphs, or renditions of famous works of art, studies of the racoon, or photos of historic locals.
and, you know, i'm torn. i don't know whether to weep or applaud. i mean, i'm the product of waldorf education -- i'm All About pretty illustrations, the actively creative self, and drawing multidisciplinary connections. i don't believe that academia needs to be dry in order to be worthy. it's just that i can't help thinking that while grown-ups need to paint and colour, too, this sort of thing should really be happening a lot more than it is in elementary and even high school. by university, even creativity should be a lot more sophisticated than shoddy grade-six science-fair posters. i despair that we're raising a generation of adult children, unable to compose an appropriate, logically constructed argument, ignorant of basic grammatical rules and historical/scientific fact, incapable of writing in the cursive, numbed to math, and barely past the stick-man phase of illustration.
clearly excellence and learning haven't been a priority for these students (or, presumably, their teachers/our government) -- leading one to wonder why they're even bothering with university at all, but whatever -- i just wish that institutions of higher education would at least try to stem the tide of idiocy by not lowering their entrance requirements or changing their course content to suit nearly the lowest common denominator. if getting into university were actually more difficult than rolling out of bed onto the floor, then maybe we'd see some striving, and maybe we'd see some changes in our public school system for the better.
3 comments:
In Germany it's a different crisis. They don't have a Masters program here, they have a thing called a Diplom, somewhere between a Masters and a PhD. It has been the thing to have, but it takes so long to get... and University has been free (now they pay around $340 a term) to the students, bla bla bla. I could go on. Ultimately I guess they're trying to move toward a more British/North American system.
But the students take their studies pretty seriously it seems. And the graduates seem to be pretty thoughtful. I guess my problem is that it seems to be too much in the other direction of an extreme, and action is incredibly slow due to the uncertainty caused by knowing enough that one isn't certain that they can ever know enough, you know?
Aya, I dunno what to think. I'm glad I finished my cheesey B.A., Germany makes me want a Masters just to keep up with the Schmidts, but my Canadian upbringing gives me a healthy disdain for educational credentials in any case. Different game, different rules, I suppose...
you know, i have to say that i feel a lot more comfortable with the stasis brought on by "too much" knowledge than i am with action fueled by relative ignorance.
i guess i'm not protestant enough to value productivity for its own sake ;-)
in fact, the medieval story of the knight parcival, considered by many to be an allegory of human development, has the protagonist "waking up" from "dullness" into doubt. the weight of the knowledge suddenly delivered upon him, and his subsequent understanding of the shocking effects of his former actions while he was still in his paradise of ignorance, send him into a tailspin of despair and self-doubt that lasts almost the rest of his life -- a good twenty years or so. eventually he comes to himself on his own terms, though, and is reconciled with all his aspects and the story ends well. but it might not for everyone. there are very real risks to knowledge and understanding doesn't always come easily, or at all, but while we might get eaten by wolves, don't you think it's better to venture into the woods with the possibility of coming out on the other side, than linger safely at the perimeter? where would be the progress in that?
why is worldly progress (action) considered more important than personal development (understanding)?
all these issues around university are coming at an interesting time for J and i because we're really beginning to feel that little j's creativity is more of a liability in the conservative public school system than an asset, and we're looking into alternatives. he is definitely not the child J or i was at 11, and while this may just be his character, it's definitely not being helped by his millieu.
at 11 i knew how to make dinner, take the bus anywhere i wanted to go in toronto, clean a bathroom, and work and play unsupervised. at 11, i fell in love for the first time (painfully), and had a complex relationship to my notion of a higher power, my sexuality, and the meaning of life. but sometimes when i look at j, all i see is this terrible and fascinating blankness. i worry that nothing in his environment (except *maybe* J and i) are encouraging him to exceed himself.
and when i see these ridiculous bristol board projects in university, i feel like i'm looking at the depressing result of an entire generation raised this way. it freaks me out.
Hm, well as a parent or pseudoparent it's definitely a bigger issue. I have all the respect in the world for doubt and questioning, except for maybe when my clothes are on fire, or I'm trapped in a car that's sinking into a lake. That's when I picture your average German asking himself "But am I really qualified to put out a fire or swim in a lake? We should pay the local Fire Department Union a Euro an hour to protest in Alexanderplatz that all the lakes are too deep!" Hahaha, man, here like everywhere there are both sides of the extremes.
Naja, but preparing kids for this world, whoa, they better be flexible I reckon. Good luck!
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