47.2 "As Whitehead has said, 'Whenever a book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will sat that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place.'"
I'm assuming that Whitehead is Alfred North Whitehead
51.1 "The dictum of Rousseau: 'It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the law. Before his parents chose a calling for him, nature called him to be a man...when he leaves me he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man.'"
Technical schools have their place, but they certainly shouldn't replace real colleges as the only place to get an education. (The one thing the Germans do badly and the whole world adopts it.) You see this trend even in how people view college: a way to get the job they want. As I said, this can be useful when you really want a particular job and need technical knowledge to do that job, but higher education generally needn't and shouldn't cater to that market.
"The one thing the Germans do badly..." Haha.
ReplyDeleteI am running into this particular brick wall quite frequently through my graduate class:
ReplyDelete"you see this trend even in how people view college: a way to get the job they want."
Sadly, I'm seeing this in my classes that are suppose to be aimed for k-12 education and I don't think it should be the main focus here either. We do not discuss very much the good of learning beyond what it can do for you in terms of a job. The focus tends towards how applicable we can make things and catering to the tendencies of this generation.
I've mentioned a couple times in discussion posts the idea of "learning for learning's sake" and how education (I'm using this in reference to the totality of it not just schooling) is good for learning to be a good person. These comments are acknowledge but then brushed aside or merely acknolwedge.
I haven't quite figured out if it is because it is a premise that they just assume or not. Similar to when Christians talk about what they love the most and then part way through their answer they inject with "but of course I love God the most...that is just a given" :-p (not quite the example I was looking for but I think it gets the point across)
It makes me wonder sometimes if students are getting sick of and not wanting to do "school" because the only destination we give them from it is a job? It would be quite ironic if that was the case since a lot of people are focusing on that as the answer to the question "what is the point of going to school?" that students ask.
Joy, of course Germans only do one thing badly.....at a time that is. They don't multi-task very well :-p