[lit-ideas] Re: The Education of a Swain

Ursula Stange wrote:
It's obvious that anyone's education is their own responsibility. But most of the students aren't there for an education. They just want the paper...
"It's obvious" only to those whose education has already started. What about those poor students who have been mis-educated or un-educated into believing that the piece of paper is the point? What do we do with them? Abandon them to their ignorance?
In a message dated 4/27/2009 9:44:26 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes: Anyway, isn't issue-centrered what every responsible student does?
Yes, every "responsible" student. Most of my students are not responsible. They haven't been taught what being a responsible student is. They are in that condition all true students are in, the condition of ignorance.
If I enrol in a philosophy programme, I know what my priorities are. I do not need an officer at an uni to tell me. I may need _advice_. But the freer the programme, it has always been understood that it's up to the learner and the learner only to _learn_.
"It has always been understood" by the EDUCATED what they need to do to become educated. What about the UN-educated, who are showing up in droves on college campuses? I'm not an "officer" at a university, I'm a teacher. I can either palm the job off on someone else, or I can try to begin to educate uneducated students by lecturing and discussing in class the nature of education, the purposes of knowledge, the role of credentials in society, and other deeply philosophical topics. These seem to be where we should start. To say to most of my students "You don't know what you're doing, so I'm only going to teach those who already know something" seems both dangerous and cruel. Professors who teach for the 1 student out of 10 who "gets" the material on a high level misses the 3 or 4 or 5 students who COULD succeed, IF they knew what success really was. I'd rather teach for half the ignorant than for the one already educated.
People misjudge academia because they think learners only learn from teachers! In German it's the more confusing, seeing that 'lehrer' _is_ teacher. And cfr. "Wind in the Willows":
There IS a role for authority and lecture and teacher-centered responsibility, EARLY ON in the process. Many of my students come to class waiting to be "informed" by the education machine "Dr. Wager." I use that early time to dis-abuse them of that notion, but I do so by lecture and by discipline and by taking full responsibility for their learning rather than throw it all on them at the start. THEN, when we've taken a look together at the nature of education, we can start all over and develop different roles in the classroom. 



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"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence and ignorance." ------------------------------------------------- 
John Wager                      jwager@xxxxxxxxxx
                             River Grove IL, USA

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