Archive for the ‘ Education ’ Category

The Cost of Going to College

Harper’s Magazine - From Ph.D. to Escort: How Debt Can Change Students

This a summary of the article Easy Chair: the Price of Admission in the June issue. They have changed their formatting to HTML to make referring to it easier. I am supposed to be able to read the whole thing online, since I subscribe to the magazine – but as is often the case (as I keep saying over and over), their software doesn’t work. The Internet was supposed to solve all our problems, but has only created more of them.

I tried to order the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, from Amazon, but it won’t be out until January of next year. The audible version is available, and I will probably end up with that.

But I don’t mind stating my own analysis of the situation – which I have stated before: America is no longer interested in people – and that includes its students – of all ages.

As Thomas Frank’s excellent article makes all too clear.

2012
05/18
CATEGORY
Economy
Education
Morality
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The Fate of the One-Room Rural Schoolhouse

The loss of these was one of the greatest losses we have experienced – similar to the loss of the family farms, with which it was associated.

My mother taught in these rural schools, back in the Twenties, and she loved it – mainly because of the status with which she was regarded. Recalling it years later, she remembered how she would go snow-sledding with her young students during their lunch hour. If they felt like extending their lunch period due to fine weather, no doubt they did. There was no one stopping them. She boarded with the farming families in the community, and got to know them intimately – and they her.

This was still the era of the horse, the roads were too bad for cars. Once the roads were improved, the rural way of life, with its communities and its schools, was doomed. This pattern has been repeated often, all over the world – social isolation caused by difficult transportation produced strong communities. Good transportation destroyed them.

I would even take it further (a point I keep making over and over): the more powerful the technology, the weaker the people. I do not think this is necessarily the case, people should be able to understand and control the impact of their technologies on them – but in practice, they cannot.

But to return to my subject – the rural schools were consolidated, and controlled by professional administrators whose sole interest was in power, and school boards with no interest in education, or the students, either. In the Fifties I was the victim of these changes, and this was one of the worst periods of my life.

My aunt, whose husband had died, and who had gone back to college to renew her teaching degree, was eliminated by a political cabal in the local school district, and could no longer teach in the community in which she had lived for most of her life.

The situation in general was this: Americans no longer had an interest in education – or for that matter, in their children.

2012
05/07
CATEGORY
Education
History
Technology
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Technology is Not Humane

This may seem like a trivial observation – but it is a one of our biggest problems.

We humans, with our hyper-active nervous systems, are always trying to make ourselves better – something no other species bothers with. They are what they are, and that is good enough for them. We have invented all kinds of clever technologies to make us better, not content with being good-enough. But even we sometimes wonder if these improvements are actually improvements. We have piled improvement on top of improvement until the whole superstructure threatens to fall over.

Consider the problem of the alienated young – a very big problem that seems to have come from nowhere. Our overdeveloped, inhuman world has left them out in the cold. Any solution would involve making our world more human again – but we have no idea how to do that. It seems like turning back the clock, but we don’t even want to slow it down, but insist on going faster and faster – heading straight of the face of a cliff.

Perhaps this is a bit dramatic, but there are plenty of other problems which demand a similar solution – slowing things down so we can figure out where we are. And this always involves making our world more congenial for us, as humans. This is common sense – but we have made technology so important it seems like treason.

However, we may not have much choice – because even our technologies are suffering. We are what makes them, and when we become defective (as we certainly have), they become defective too.

Two examples have appeared to me recently – the crisis in books and the crisis in software development. Books have been central to modern culture, but we are fast losing interest in them –  and at the same time there are so many of them they are practically raining from the sky. Here again, the first step would be to simply slow down the treadmill we are on so we can get some breathing space and figure out what to do.

However, becoming aware of where we are is precisely what we do not want to do – because where we are is so bad. Instead of looking at our problems we resolutely look the other way, and claim we do not have any. Our dominant feeling is fear – or more accurately anxiety, because we do not know what we are afraid of – and we are scared to death of finding out.

I said we are scared to death – and that is close to the truth, because we are scared of a death that has already happened to us, and is still stalking in our midst. Our reaction has been simple – to destroy everything, and get it all over as quickly as possible – so we won’t suffer too long.

Software development, I realize, is a more esoteric subject. But trust me, it has the same problem – trying to figure what it is trying to do (developing a philosophy, that is). Making itself good for people – and not just getting people to be good to it.

2012
02/03
CATEGORY
Business
Education
Philosophy
Technology
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Thinking Has Become Painful

It is painful because it can get you into trouble, and because you discover too many things you don’t want to know. One discovery can lead to another, as it almost always does, and before you know it you are in deep shit. Not someplace you want to be.

The only sensible solution is to not think at all – the solution used by almost everyone. It is much easier – and safer – to latch onto someone else’s thinking and call it your own – after making sure, of course, that everyone else has decided to do this also. Doesn’t this imbecility bother people? Not at all, because all this is unconscious behavior which can be indulged in freely. As a culture, we have agreed not to notice it.

Someone like me can talk about it as much as he wants, without bothering them in the least. They have all agreed not to follow unwanted thoughts into forbidden waters.

Isn’t this dangerous behavior? Isn’t a culture that cannot think bound to get into big trouble? Absolutely; and we are in big trouble because of this. But it all happened by degrees, over a long period of time.

Initially, we made certain decisions about how we were going behave and what we were going to believe. Decisions made at the beginning of the modern era, that seemed sensible and necessary at the time. Northern Europe made one set of decisions that Southern Europe rejected. The Reformation started in the North, which was countered in the South by the Counter-Reformation.

All of this has conveniently been forgotten, swept under the rug, and ignored. Everyone, North and South, is demanding “What has this got to do with us now?” The answer, dear friends, is: everything. These are the decisions and biases that formed the present – that we are determined to ignore. Every schoolchild should know about them – but instead the educational establishment ignores them completely. Even Philosophy has ignored them – with only a few exceptions (such as Ortega y Gasset). Even Buddhism, which was initially formed to solve this kind of initial problem, has been unable to comprehend how they developed.

The end result is that we are in really bad shape – so bad, it is painful to think about it. So we don’t think.

2012
01/14
CATEGORY
Education
History
Philosophy
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Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool

NPR (link from Slashdot)

NPR reports that Harvard physicist and professor Eric Mazur has largely gotten rid of the lecture in his classes, after finding that in lecture-based classes, students tend to commit to memory formulae and heuristics, but fail to develop deep understanding of concepts. Mazur has tried — and seemingly succeeded — to cultivate deeper learning with a combination of small group peer-instruction and a tight feedback loop based on in-class polling about particular problems.

Dear me, what a shocking idea! Expecting students to know something. And not only that, expecting teachers to be effective too.

Parents will be furious.

2012
01/04
CATEGORY
Education
Science
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Stanford’s Free Computer Science Courses

I Programmer

How come it took fifty years for this to happen? (I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1959.) It’s about time we gave the Educational Establishment the boot! And Stanford is leading the way.

I have signed up for the Human-Computer Interaction course. I have been mouthing off about this so much, I might as well learn something about it.

2011
11/24
CATEGORY
Education
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The Non-Linear World

We have moved from a linear to a non-linear world, and the shock of this has been more than we can handle. What do I mean by this? I am talking about rate of change. Previously, this was manageable, now it is not. I am reminded of a Sixties song “Stop the world, I want to get off!”

This is related to the impact of technology on our lives – technological innovation has gotten faster and faster, with the result that social change got faster and faster. We did not see this as a problem – quite to the contrary, it seemed very exciting and profitable. Innovation was seen as a good thing – and the more there was of it, the better.

We actually thought everyone was going to get rich – in the new economy. Instead, everybody got poorer – except the very rich, who had too much already. This was innovation, but not the kind we wanted.

What I am going to do now, is what we all should be doing – but are not – going back over our past in an attempt to understand it. And to see where we got off the track.

I am hardly the first to try this, everybody and his brother has had his hand at it – and many of the are far better qualified. But one more voice in the crowd cannot hurt.

First, a definition. It started with a development in mathematics, which effected physics, which caused the Industrial Revolution. Isaac Newton, like everyone else of his time, was trying to understand the world. Then a strange idea occurred to him: that the world must be governed by mathematical laws. What a strange idea, right?

The math necessary for this had not been invented yet, so he, along with Leibniz, invented it – what we now call calculus. The basic idea here is simple: change could only happen so fast and this rate of change could be expressed by a mathematical formula, using a new notation. To this day, few can understand this – including the math instructor who taught it to me in a religious college I was sent to by my parents.

The impact of this was amazing: Newton had broken the code of how nature worked! The world (later dubbed the clockwork universe) was simply mechanical, through and through! The social implication was also amazing: people knew they could figure out how things worked, and use things to their own advantage, because the world was linear (it didn’t have any hidden surprises)!

For two hundred years this was thought to be the way things were. Then two things happened about the same time: modern society broke down, and so did Newtonian physics. The 20th Century experienced WW1 and WW2 – part of the move, as it turned out, towards Globalization. Einstein saved Newtonian physics with Relativity, but also helped invent Quantum Mechanics – which he later regretted, and fought against all the rest of his life.

Why was this? Because Quantum Mechanics was non-linear, things could jump from one state to another, and not change smoothly. No one was comfortable with this, but it quickly because obvious that this was how the world of the very small worked – not at all as larger things worked.

But that was not all: digital computers took over. When I was going to Electrical Engineering school in the Fifties, they did not teach digital computers, but analog computers – something you only see now in science museums. They were linear, something they were comfortable with.

But that didn’t matter, digital computers took over, and this opened up a whole new world. A short review is in order: in digital computers, only two states are allowed: a zero or a one – and nothing in-between. The real world, the analog world, has to be digitized before a digital computer can work with it. Digital computers needed software to run them, and eventually the Internet (completely digital) showed up to form an entirely new complex: the computer/software/internet (CSI). It quickly took over our world, and took control of it.

It should seem strange to speak of a technology controlling the world – but there is no better way of saying it. People have become addicted to their things – and, as with any addiction, it controls those addicted to it. In our case, our technologies, which have gotten out of control.

2011
11/16
CATEGORY
Economy
Education
Sociology
Technology
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How do Things Effect People?

This is hard to say because there are many kinds of things and many kinds of people. But one result we can predict: the things will not change (since they are incapable of this) but the people will (since they can).

We end up adapting ourselves to our things. Any successful new technology becomes successful because it changes us. We and it become something new entirely.

Civilized man, to take an extreme example, was far different from what he had been before. He and his technologies had merged completely to produce the techno-people complex we call civilization.

Before going on, however, I should clarify what I am talking about. I have switched to talking about technology - a much broader term, because it not only includes physical objects but human skills. A blow-gun is not just a gun, but a whole complex of activities necessary to produce it and use it.

Writing is a technology that includes the materials used to write on and with – but it is much more than that: it involves memes, to use a modern term, based on its resemblance to genes. Humans changed themselves to accommodate a new technology – and, as a result changed dramatically – and much of that resulting change was not something we can be proud of.

For thousands of years, the pace of technological change was modest, slow enough that people could accommodate themselves to it. But recently, beginning in the 17th Century, we have been hit by a technological explosion – one that has completely overwhelmed us – and destroyed us.

It produced a population explosion – mass man – barbarians who were suddenly thrust into the modern world. This phenomena, which is so common anyone can see it, nevertheless demands an explanation.

The Modern world, almost by definition, was a break from the Medieval world. It needed a new kind of people, who had to be trained in their new roles. This training took time, usually several years during adolescence. Everyone had to learn a trade or a profession. As time went on, and the skills become more complicated, formal schooling developed, with students eagerly flocking to the centers of learning where a variety of educational programs were developed.

The population explosion overwhelmed these educational facilities, with the result that uneducated people flooded the world with disastrous irreversible consequences. Note the world irreversible - society was warped so badly it could not recover. Educating an individual barbarian is difficult, but educating a barbaric society is impossible. There are exceptions, of course, but the general statement is still valid.

This situation was not helped by the latest technologies – the television, and the computer/software/internet. We had trouble enough being people before – but now it has become impossible. The forces against us have become too strong. Why? Making people even more stupid and more helpless is too profitable.

Just as a mental exercise – how could we go about changing this? First, we would have to reacquaint ourselves with what it means to be human – and then consciously go about changing our world to facilitate this. I spoke about this in my other posting today We Have to Take Care of Ourselves .But before this could happen, people would have to wake up to the seriousness of their situation.

2011
10/21
CATEGORY
Education
Philosophy
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School ‘Reform’: A Failing Grade

New York Review

Here is the final paragraph:

In these two books, we have two versions of school reform. One is devised by Wall Street financiers and politicians who believe in rigidly defined numerical goals and return on investment; they blame lazy teachers and self-interested unions when test scores are low. The other draws on the deep experience of a compassionate teacher who finds fault not with teachers, unions, or students, but with a society that refuses to take responsibility for the conditions in which its children live and learn—and who has demonstrated through her own efforts how one dedicated teacher has improved the education of poor young people.

For myself, the terminal pessimist, I simply see it as a tragic part of the collapse of America. The children, as usual, suffer.

2011
09/24
CATEGORY
Education
1 comment

When Teachers Learn From Their Students

“The American young are useless”, I have said loudly and clearly. And nearly everyone I talk to agrees – but then usually modifies their agreement in ways that tell me a lot about them. After all, the American young are a product of America itself – and reflect back on it.

I am reading Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. Chapter Three is about Duke University’s giving its students iPods for free, hoping to create a new style of learning. The uproar over this landed them on the front cover of Newsweek. The educational establishment was apoplectic:the iPod was nothing but a toy, and had no place in a classroom. Nearly everyone agreed.

I have picked a few quotations that show what it was up against:

We were creating a calculated exercise in disruption, distraction, and difference: a lesson in institutional unlearning…Instead of teaching, we hoped to learn.

We were inverting the traditional roles of teacher and learner, the fundamental principle in education: hierarchy based on credentials.

Crowdsourcing believes that difference and diversity – not expertise and uniformity – solves problems. If you predict the result in any way, if you try to force a solution, you limit the participation and therefore the likelihood of success. The community mot served by the solution should be chiefly involved in the process of finding it.

While formal education typically teaches hierarchies of what’s worth paying attention to, crowdsourcing works differently, in that it assumes that no one of us is smarter than all of us collectively. No matter how expert we are, no matter how brilliant, we can improve, we can learn, by sharing insights and working together collectively.

If this isn’t enough, I want to add my own two-cents worth:

Teachers are now getting what they deserve, for helping to ruin the youth of America. I carefully stayed away from a teaching career because I could see what it was doing to the teachers and students alike. It was a hell I wanted to have no part of.

I have the equivalent of an iPod, and have tried doing a few podcasts of my own. But for me, blogging is the best way for me to learn – and, hopefully, to help others learn.

Is this happening? The first part is: I am learning. The second part: communicating with others is not working so well. So far I have 10 subscribers, although there must be some lurkers out there too.

2011
09/01
CATEGORY
Education
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