Something to make you think ...

Lately I've become a regular reader of the online newspaper The Tyee. Based out of Vancouver it has a definite left of centre leaning, and its coverage of Poverty, Housing, Homelessness and other related issues are simply exceptional ... (perhaps I'll do more on that later ...)

Today I found a fascinating article by Stan Perksy, (a writer, intellectual, social commentator, and philosophy professor), that takes Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente to task for comments she made about modern education. Persky's rebuttal is eloquent, concise and provocative. He counters the erroneous data cited by Wente, but more than that, he also offers a social commentary on education and the perceptions and realities as we find them in our society.

As I read his words I reflected back on the courses I took at McMaster with the more experienced elder members of our faculty ... Dr Meyer, Dr Valle, Dr Arapura and others who taught, not to offer us a marketable skill, nor to prepare us for a job, but who taught us HOW TO THINK FOR OURSELVES.

I remember Dr Meyer coming in to class one day with "The Closing of the American Mind" by Alan Bloom, and launching into a two week digression in the midst of a course on the Gospel of John on what education was really about ... He didn't disagree with Bloom, and at the end of the day, Dr Meyer sent us into the world with the clear understanding that his intent and goal was to teach us to think for ourselves ... he even quoted John Houseman's character from The Paper Chase saying - "you come here with minds full of mush, and you leave here thinking, not like lawyers, but like enlightened intelligent human beings able to think for yourselves ..."

I think Persky would say a hearty "Amen!" to Dr Meyer ... Thank God there are still profs like them around:

The cultural context for most young people is intellectually barren, filled with distracting bells and whistles, and inculcated by an incessant drumbeat of saturation advertising designed to persuade the young that possession of the latest video game/download/fashion/you-name-it-"lifestyle"-ornament is an absolute necessity in the quest to be cool. Of course, the actual purpose of the advertising is to... wait, don't get me started on the evils of capitalism.

Let's just say that after 18 years of school vs. iPods, cellphones, YouTube, FaceBook, GrandTheftAuto and the rest, the latter have pretty much won. It's little wonder that the students arrive at the civilizing sanctuary knowing little of literature, history, science, philosophy or anything else useful in the curriculum. As I see it, it's our job to remedy the barbarism by teaching the various subjects we teachers know something about. True, some teachers are irritated and bored by the prospect of having to do so much "remedial" work with their badly-educated students. I'm not.

Wente is also right to complain about the universities, but misguided in seeing their main fault as caving in to the pressures of the market by lowering standards in a bid to retain students at any costs, and thus creating a false "inflation" of university-educated people (to say nothing of "grade inflation"). What's gone wrong with the universities is that they've bought in (or have been forced to buy in by the marketplace) to the idea that they're job training centres, rather than places to educate citizens, acculturate people, and stimulate the ability to think for one's self. What's more, the misdirection of post-secondary schooling is exacerbated by market pressures to adopt industrial methods of instruction.

The result is vastly overcrowded lecture halls (frequently 500 students or more crammed into introductory classes in psychology, biology, electronic basketweaving or what have you) and the diminishment of the now almost lost art of teaching. In place of conversation and discussion, there's an emphasis on lecturing (a form of teaching, to be sure, but perhaps an inferior one), aided by PowerPoint presentations, mindless note-taking, and "online" supplements.

(to read the rest of Persky's article - click here)