I have several friends who are extremely intelligent, quite accomplished professionally, driven and self-motivated, and very well-informed people who all have the exact same attitude about school that I do: it sucks, and they hate it.
One was an engineer for Ford for over 20 years who designed some of their most crucial systems. Another has worked as a professional programmer and technical writer for decades. I can think of others. Hell, important historical figures like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison tended to view traditional education as an irrelevancy when they didn't view it with contempt.
And, indeed, prior to the 20th century, almost none of the great minds of history ever had a K-12 education followed by an undergrad degree, then a grad degree, then a doctorate. So why is it, do you suppose, that today we have come to view this as the pinnacle of intellectual achievement?
The question is rhetorical, just so you know.
Anyway, one of my favorite commenters, named Katherine, recently sent me an email asking me this:
Would you be willing to tell me what it was as a youngster that made school unhappy for you? Were there specifics? What would have made it work? What kind of personality did you have as a child that the typical classroom didn't/doesn't work for you? Did that manifest into how you feel about education as a life learner?
My answer was long and rambling, and since I wrote it, I figured I'd share it with you.
I can tell you that as a child, school was unhappy for me in part because we moved around a lot. Thus I was constantly the new kid and usually had trouble establishing a place in the pecking order. This has probably contributed to a lifelong negative view of school that I doubt I will ever shake, even though college is a very different environment.
Nevertheless, I am not at all convinced that this was my primary problem in school. I think friction with other children only aggravated a problem that is fundamental to my nature.
I have a fiercely independent mindset (no, really?), and I've had that since I was a child. Thinking for myself, questioning authoritiy--I've had that since I was very young. Even at an early age I tended to be fearless in questioning anything a teacher or other authority figure told me, and as an adult this trait is only stronger today. I have also learned through experience that people, including me, can be absolutely certain about something and absolutely wrong about it. This tends to make teachers less authority figures for me than they are for other people---and it also makes me particularly annoyed when I believe teachers are being unreasonable or irrational.
On top of this, I have a deep resentment of college professors who don't see their students as paying customers, and treat them accordingly. Ah, but I ramble. Anyway:
As to what would have made school better for me, even as a child: a lot more time to explore on my own would have helped enormously. In my last couple of years of High School, by incredible good fortune I wound up in a special school where about half my day was spent in activities where I basically had free reign to explore, with only occasional interference from teachers. I absolutely thrived in that environment as a teenager, and would likely have thrived on it at much earlier ages.
Indeed, let me be perfectly clear: I am not saying that I was an advanced student who needed more challenging material. At times this may have been true. But at least as often--I'd say most often--the real problem was that I simply learn better by exploring on my own. Give me the book, let me read it, let me read related materials outside the text, let me ask the occasional question, but otherwise, please leave me alone. I have always worked best this way.
Although, on a related vein, one of the most powerful ways for me to learn is to explain a subject to another person who is struggling with it. But this, again, usually works best in the context of a peer, not in a context where I am a supplicant seeking wisdom from a mentor.
I am also a non-auditory learner. I learn almost nothing from listening to a person speak. Except when I am asking a very specific question, for which I generally expect a very specfiic answer, I learn almost nothing from listening to others speak (except, perhaps, things about the person's personality).
This also at times causes friction when I ask questions. When I ask question, I generally have an urge to hit people over the head with a club when they fail to answer me in a straightforward fashion. This often makes me seem like a jerk, for when I ask a question, and they don't give me a straightforward answer, I will usually ask the question again in a slightly different way, and if they still don't give me a straightforward answer, I generally become irritatable or dismissive. In any case I seek to end the conversation as quickly as possible so that I may continue persuing the answer on my own.
In any case, my mind tends to tune out others when they speak, and this has been true for as long as I can remember. It may be a personality flaw--it often annoys my wife, for I sometimes zone out on her when she's speaking to me. But I do this to friends, to co-workers, and just about everyone I know. It may be a form of attention deficit disorder, while others might call it laziness or selfishness. Regardless of what it is, ever since I was a small child my mind has tended to wander off even in the middle of one-on-one conversations. My parents, my uncle and aunt, my grandparents often remarked upon it even when I was only five or six years old.
If I sometimes wander off in the middle of everyday conversations with people I know and respect, as you must imagine it is nearly impossible for me to not mentally wander off during a lecture unless the speaker is particularly compelling and the subject matter quite novel to me. I honestly believe I am incapable of listening to all by the most compelling and exciting lecturer speak for more than five minutes without my mind wandering off. Couple this with the fact that I've usually read the material and don't need the lecture in most classes, and you can see why I feel the classroom to be a terrifically dull waste of my time, most of the time.
Nor do I particularly want it "fixed," for my mind's capacity to wander off on its own is, I believe, more often a blessing than a curse. It leads me to having far-ranging interests, and frequently to make connections between seemingly disparate facts in seemingly unrelated areas. It also, frankly, leads me to see connections that others seem completely unable to see until I point them out.
I get told fairly often that I am a very smart person, but I suspect that I'm not all that smart. I believe I am merely a very effective daydreamer and woolgatherer. This is as much a weakness as a strength, really. But it certainly makes the traditional classroom an exercise in frustration for me, for, with the exception of subjects where you have to physically do something (mix chemicals, dissect things, build things), a classroom is almost invariably a waste of my time.
The thing is that I know other people like this. Everybody I have ever met who is like this tends to be quite intelligent, and most of them are driven individuals of substantial accomplishment. Many of them think of themselves as lazy people, but when you make a list of their accomplishments, even they are often surprised by how much more they've done with their lives than most people have.
For example, I know a lady who was an engineer at Ford for many years, a highly talented designer and programmer who led many important technological developments for Ford. She dropped out of college because she hated it so much, and never seriously considered going back.
Of course in being such a person she was not unlike Henry Ford himself, who never went to college and tended, like his buddy Thomas Edison, to view college degrees with rather contemptuous dismissal.
Ah, but there I go, wandering off again.
The short answers to your questions:
I'm a rebellious think-for-yourself person, I daydream a lot, I am impatient at having things explained that I don't need explained, and I almost invariably prefer prefer self-directed study. I believe I've been this way since I was a child, and that school has always been miserable for me as a result.
I will be 38 years old this year and do not expect this aspect of my personality to change. Nor do I particularly want it to. My GPA is high, and I just hope to get out of this prison as soon as possible so I never have to go back.
By the way, here are some seemingly-random data points that I believe may just be related to why I, and some other people, respond so poorly to the traditional classroom environment:
I am usually thinking about two or three different things at any given moment, and they are usually completely different subjects.
I am always listening to music, 100% of the time. If I don't have music physically playing, it's irrelevant, because there is always music playing in my head. You can walk up to me any time of day or night, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and ask me what music is playing in my head, and I can tell you. It's always something different. (It's Bob Marley as I type this, in case you're curious.)
Speaking of which, I have very eclectic musical tastes. Unusually eclectic.
I often talk to myself, spontaneously and unconsciously.
Except when working on rote memorization, I rarely take notes and, even when I do take them, I almost always throw them away without ever looking at them.
I am currently running honors-level grades even though I hate every moment I spend in the classroom, and can't wait to escape.
I don't know if any of that makes sense to you, but it does to me. Somehow, I think it all relates. Although I'm not sure why, intuitively, I think it is so.
In fact, I predict that in response to my posting this article, multiple people will respond and say, "You know, I'm just like that!"
There's a doctoral thesis in education or psychology in there somewhere. Traditional education methods tend to frustrate the hell out of some people, and they're quite often not particularly lazy or unintelligent people.
Sorry if the above is a bit disjointed and rambling, but I hope it's useful or thought-provoking in some way.
And, indeed, prior to the 20th century, almost none of the great minds of history ever had a K-12 education followed by an undergrad degree, then a grad degree, then a doctorate. So why is it, do you suppose, that today we have come to view this as the pinnacle of intellectual achievement?
Who views getting their Ph.D. as the pinnacle of intellectual achievement? It's just a starting point for a career as an intellectual--and not the only one at that. It's a prerequisite for getting a tenure track job teaching college, but otherwise not necessary for too many positions.
A sane enough attitude, James--or should I say Dr. Joyner? :-)
When I figure our exactly how you have been reading my mind, I am going to be extremely miffed. In the mean time - What you said.
Great minds without formal education continued to have influence into the 20th century. Charles Parsons is one of my favorite examples. His axial flow turbine was one of the most comprehensive inventions ever; the Scientific American article about him suggested that it was what we would now be called home schooling which facilitated his accomplishment.
Automobile builder Ettore Bugatti, who was to Henry Ford as, well, you can't compare them other than to say they both created cars and the companies which made them, wasn't formally educated either.
The universal requirement for degrees, including doctorates, is nothing but an exercise in enshrining mediocrity, imo. I have never seen any particular correlation between a college education and intelligence, or knowledge.
To tell you the truth, in some ways our fascination with institutional education and degrees reminds me of the guild system.
Let me tell you, it won't go away. I'm 67 and you just wrote a description of my mind. Except for the music, I don't hear it all the time. (But I do have a question on that music thing, I have a spot in my brain where I feel music, I have, if not perfect pitch recognition, near perfect, and I know where it resides. Do you? Just wondering how common it is. I have kids who have it but my husband doesn't.)
I admit that my constant feeling that I know it before someone explains it has caused some problems, but in truth, I usually do. God bless our little hearts, that can be really annoying. Particularly if you have been married for 45 years to a person who is the same way!! He feels the same way; we are a riot sometimes. Our kids, who are older than you, just shrug and grin.
The current situation is exactly the old guild system, very hard to get into the guild. But for some of us who know the lingo of the guild, it is easy to be mistaken for a member. Most of the time all you need is the lingo, or whatever the current word for lingo is.
And you thought you might be rambling. Enough.
Very good post.
Dean,
All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not the only person with bad note-taking habits who talks to myself!
You are quite right. Education seems to mean teaching to the lowest denominator. Even top colleges and universities are graduating people who cannot express their ideas on paper.
I have been appalled at the number of 'top' college grads who are hired because they have a degree from a 'top' school who cannot put together a paragraph on anything.
You described my oldest son perfectly. I find it very easy to listen, but also found I learn best when teaching others - especially in math.
More and more we are consolidating schools, making them larger when we should be making them smaller and breaking students up into smaller groups. The best educational experiences I had as a child all occurred when we broke the class into smaller groups and did something active.
Sometimes time is wasted in group activities, and to some extent the stronger students suffer at the expense of the weaker students, but this happens in a larger classroom setting anyway. In a small group setting, I was usually able to tutor weaker students and found I often learned the material better in the process than I would have on my own.
I'm also a big fan of independent study. I did a lot of this because I was bored silly and was driving my teachers insane. But you can't do that in a class with 30 students - it's too big a burden on one teacher. Why not get more student teachers involved to help out, or seniors as volunteers in the classroom?
At the collegiate level, I rather enjoyed school because it was on my own terms.
My youngest son attends a Great Books school - they have no lectures. They all read the same texts, then go to class and discuss them. The tutors merely guide the discussion, but don't really lecture. Major weakness is the lack of historical context, but they have their reasons for this approach.
I was impressed, because the kids actually meet outside the classroom to read and discuss because they are excited about what they are reading. They meet over the summer and during breaks - they call each other to discuss ideas. When his girlfriend came out here, they headed right over to the bookshelves in the living room and pulled out a pile of books and started arguing. It was kind of neat, because I love books and hoped my boys would inherit that love.
They also a lot of other strange things, like playing old fashioned games, having waltzes, etc. Sort of anachronistic, but fun. It has its faults, but was the perfect place for him.
I think Cassandra's point about smaller schools is an important one. People will feel much less anonymous, and there are likely to be fewer discipline problems. Also, cutting *school* size should be much less expensive than cutting *class* size.
Interesting analogy..a few years ago I read a book on how to run a manufacturing business. The author argued that, whenever technically feasible, factories should have no more than 300-400 employees.
The function of school is to get children off the streets so both parents can go out to work. A secondary function is to "socialize" children so they learn how to associate with people they would rather not know outside school. This it thought to be some kind of preparation for life. Needless to say, it isn't. Very little in the outside world resembles what goes on in schools. (The only places I can think of immediately are prisons and the army).
I am a daydreamer too. All thinking, problem solving people are. The idea that what I'm thinking about presently is going to correspond both to what 20 other people in the same room want to think about and the contents of some authoritarian syllabus is complete fantasy.
Like Dean, my thoughts rapidly switch from topic to topic in a manner which cannot be scheduled. This is nothing to do with any kind of attention deficit quack-nonsense, it's simply to do with what I'm interested in and what connections I'm making.
The only way you can guarantee to get a class to follow a syllabus on a timetable and pass an exam is by systematic manipulation, bribery and coercion.
The problem is, coercion is inherently stressful and inimical to problem-solving, to growing knowledge. Morally, its arbitrary application is a denial of the fact that children are human beings.
At school, you study at secondhand the results obtained by creative thinkers. Those thinkers, like Dean said, mostly despised schooling. It was something they survived rather than learnt anything useful from. I say "survived" because thankfully for us they weren't been put off some areas of knowledge for life (like so many people are put off math for life, having been forced to assimilate logarithms or whatever).
So howcome universities work, then? After all, there's no personal teacher following you about.
I think the answer is: by that stage, one's view of education has altered totally from what it once was. Before school, children are like little scientists, energetically pursuing their curiosity as they learn to walk, talk, and master other complex tasks (note, without any curriculum).
After school, one views education as a drudge and a necessary evil. Long periods of boredom punctuated by frantic bursts of fear and worry (exam time, for instance). The reason we pursue it is because we've internalised the coercion I mentioned above. We goad ourselves on because we don't want to let our parents, ourselves, and our society down. As if it were possible to goad oneself into being interested in every part of a syllabus...
I think an employer views a degree as a kind of peacock's tail, or expensive engagement ring. It's a crude guarantee that you'll outcompete others and do whatever it takes to succeed. You're safe, loyal and boring. This offsets the risk of taking on a new employee, who normally can't increase a firm's productivity for the first 6 months anyway.
It's only rarely that the contents of a degree correspond to the contents of a job description. The benefits of university mostly lie outside the lecture hall.
I'd like to see Western society moving away from institutionalised education and towards a place where you get a first job because you can show some real knowledge and enthusiasm about what it is you're going to do. Or you are your own boss ;-)
I plan to home-educate my children. And, no, we won't be following a syllabus. Not unless they want to.
www.takingchildrenseriously.com
Most of what I know I learned in libraries, reading on my own whatever interested me.
Dean, I think that one reason you "hate every moment in the classroom" is that unlike many of us, you were unable to take the traditional route through college. I must say that my college days in the classroom were some of the most rewarding and intellectually stimulating periods in my life, therefore, each moment in class is a reminder that your fortunes were different than most. More significantly, since you are a family man, extremely intelligent (despite your humility) and again, each moment is time and money spent on something other than your family.
It must be a difficult struggle knowing that you easily trump 21 year-old college graduates in every intellectual area, yet they have better job opportunities because of their diploma, but that will soon be over once you finish.
As an instructor in a military course, I see students with college degrees struggling to keep up with kids right out of high school academically. My course is a difficult course, and college graduates have no more success than others. In fact, they tend to have greater difficulty because their education seems to have taught them what to believe rather than how to analyze thing critically. I guess I was lucky and graduated from a good program at a small school.
Ruth: I don't have a spot in my brain for pitch, no. Although I do have an excellent ear for pitch as it happens. Though I don't have perfect pitch, I imagine I could learn it fairly easily (I've read more than one source that says it can be taught).
I have a theory about folks like us. Jung would have called us intuitive thinkers. On the Myers-Briggs scale we probably lean heavy on "thinking" vs. "feeling" and heavier on intuition than on sensing.
Cassandra: That sounds like an incredible schoo, and one I'd love.
Tom: I think you're going to have some lucky kids.
Tim: I confess, you are probably right about parts of that. Time in class is time away from my family, and you are absolutely right that I do think about that regularly.
I also suppose you are right that a smaller school with a lot mroe opportunity for self-directed learning would probably be a much happier place for me.
By the way, since we're sharing thoughts about non-traditional learners:
One of my oddest pet theories (I have a number of odd pet theories) involves many of us who are non-traditional learners. We tend to have exceedingly active and vivid imaginations, and to have minds that easily function on multiple simultaneous tracks, and to enjoy making intuitive, logical connections between ideas and data.
I believe--with absolutely no scientific credibility to back me up--that people diagnosed as schizophrenic have brains that work exactly the same way, but to a pathological level. In other words, they're just like us, only it's reached a profound, out-of control state with them.
We might say that the primary difference between someone diagnosed as manic-depressive (or bipolar) and someone who is simply given to mood swings is merely a matter of degree. Similarly, I suspect that schizophrenics are on part of the same continuum: A little schizophrenic and you are a daydreamer with a vivid imagination and a creative streak. A lot schizophrenic and the space monkeys are eating your face and trying to steal your socks and you're living in a van down by the river.
Note that if you've ever had the unique experience of conversing with a profound schizophrenic, some of you might grasp what I'm talking about. Schizophrenics, those high-enough functioning to converse with, are often fscinating. Their minds seem to be zinging around in several directions at once, almost like a beehive, with the workers and drones each an individual idea buzzzing around in the hive, interacting with each other but also off on their own paths and tasks.
I once watched an interview with a fairly profound schizophrenic on television. I was watching it with friends. They found him utterly bizarre and could not understand what he was saying, because he rambled so seemingly incoherently. I on the other hand understood the man perfectly--it was just three or four simultaneous trains of thought that needed untangling.
I've had similar face-to-face experiences in talking with schizophrenics, or people I believe to be schizophrenic just from talking to them. Most of my artistic-type friends are the same way, just a lot less profoundly so.
Music Folks: Does the music link with anything? Does anything trigger or change it?
Also, does your emotional thinking work like your mental thinking? Are they connected in any way?
By the way, I have a crush on all of you. It's purely intellectual mind you, but there all the same.
Hm. I have a lot of the same, or similar, attributes, although it's not an exact mirror. Had some kind of interesting thought-stream going during the comments that I was going to put down as an observation, then lost it.
Anyway, something that I do, and I wonder if some of you do too:
Take programming as an example. I took, oh, a few courses on C programming 3-4 years ago, hated all but the ultra-intraductory one because the teacher didn't know crap about conveying knowledge, just showing it off. But give it a few years, and point me at some already developed source code for something that I want to improve in some way, and it starts making broad sense, even if I've forgotten some of the fine details.
Lots of similar stuff with practical applications that I considered useless and struggled with in class (because 1) I couldn't stick to the rote formula and 2) a lot of teachers expected more of me than they did other students because they perceived my intelligence)... as I was saying, that I struggled with in class, make sense now in a kind of 'my fingers know it when I zone just right even if I am totally bored by it'.
I've also always learned better by doing or self-studying with resources there only if I need them, at least once I got the basics down. Those professors who tried to skip the process and have me develop the craving for self-learning on a subject all by myself were often disappointed.
Not sure I conveyed what I intended to, but anyway.
University degrees and the hierarchy of such degrees are a form of credentialism are a necessary vetting procedure in employment because of prohibitions on IQ testing.
Simply, degrees serve as a proxy for intelligence and it is easier to judge by proxy rather than investing the time and resources to judge an individual on his/her own merits.
Further, credentialism has now taken on a life of its own when credentials are becoming necessary even when a person's capabilities are known and sufficient to perform their new tasks but advancement can't take place without the credential.
Credentialism is a very expensive end-run around IQ testing and it introduces all sorts of distortions into the labor market.
Dean, you describe me as well - the mind wandering off when I get bored listening to things I don't much care about, the creative streak, the self-directed study, the eclectic musical taste, etc.
Especially the ability to make connections that others don't see - it can get quite frustrating - "how can others not see this?! It's as obvious as the nose on your face!"
Like you, I view the daydreaming as more a blessing than a curse. It is obvious though that at certain times other people just don't get what is going on in my head. Tough on the wife, for one.
And I'm envious of those DVDs you've got - I and my friends are big blues fans.
It is nice to see a kindrid spirit. I went to 17 different schools in 5 states from the time I started until I graduated from High School. I can identify with always being the "new kid". It does tend to give you a different perspective on things.
I tend to learn better by doing rather than by reading. I know several programming languages (not necessarily well, but I can get by), but I never was able to sit down and read a book about how to do it. Give me a problem to solve, the references I need, the tools, and then leave me alone. I usually get the job done and it normally works. Perhaps not as elegantly as someone "trained" in the art, but to me the end result is what counts.
You mentioned the fact that you tend to daydream or go off on another tangent when listening to others. I do exactly thae same thing, to the chagrin of my wife sometimes. I think that there is one good thing for that however. If I have one thing that I have always been good at, it is fixing things or finding the root cause of a problem. I fully believe that this "wandering mind" thing that you were describing is something that allows your mind to make connections that might not otherwise show up. These connections can, many times, be the thing that allows a problem to be solved.
All that said, I had a practical reason to get my BS, because, like it or not, that piece of paper is necessary to even get interviewed these days, but I have no desire to get a Masters, because I see no practical need for it. I started at Ford a long time ago. At the time I hired in, there were several engineers with MS degrees that came in at the same time. They came in a grade higher because of the degree, but in most cases I was at least one grade ahead of them 5 years later. It is what you do that counts.
Am I to understand by all this that when human beings are moving their lips and emitting sounds, they're actually communicating something and expect you to pay attention?
TangoMan: There is one major flaw in your reasoning. There was a time when experience trumped degrees. If you could show 10, 20 years of experience in a field, the degree didn't matter. But in industry after industry, that has changed. The I.T. industry was one of the last to start to fall to this insidious force, but now it's following most others that way. That's the only reason I'm in school, to be honest.
This is why I think the comparison to guilds that others have made is far more apt. It increasingly seems to me like a little unconscious club, of the "I had to spend all this money and swallow all this garbage to get my job, so to rationalize that I'm going to only hire people who did the same." It's become a status symbol, a membership token for an in-group, and those of us who don't believe in it are forced to go along if we know what's good for us.
Like I said, I know a lady who was a very successful, highly-regarded engineer for Ford. She designed the cruise control systems used in every Ford vehicle for almost a decade, including writing all the code used in all Fords worldwide. Eventually she got fired after 20 years. For what? Nothing less and nothing more than the fact that she had no degree.
Katherine: I hope others will answer your questions, since (as I suspected) there are a few of us lurking around here.
In my particular case with music, the trigger seems to be almost entirely non-emotional and not mood driven. This evening I heard someone say "don't go" on television and "Baby Please Don't Go" by Muddy Waters has been running through my head ever since. It's usually something like that: a phrase or an event triggers a word association of some sort.
(Besides, that's such a killer guitar riff.)
I'm not sure how to answer the question on emotional thinking. I know that by nature I am more intuitive than observant--in other words, instead of observing everything around me, I focus on a few things and their probable significance. I view emotional data in that way: see an emotional expression of some sort, and intuit its likely cause. Which as I've gotten older I've gotten pretty good at.
I don't know if this relates or not.
I view emotion as an intelligence too. And intuition I think is part of that, versus instinct. Yes, yes. It is intelligence. There are many types of intelligences and most people have several.
I don't have the spatial, can find my way around the city, kind of intelligence--but I can find my way around a person or a group just fine.
Musical/Creative ability is an intelligence. Gardner's theories have been ignored by some, accepted by others, and expanded. He recently added spiritual intelligence to his list.
Everything relates. When people talk and share, it is amazing how much information teachers can get if they listen to what they are being told.
A perfect example is what Rosemary shared about your son. He listened to her, and he followed directions, he listened to his heart, and he made the right choice for him. As a teacher, what does that tell me? It tells me that he is beginning to think critically, that he is an independent thinker, that he checks in for clarification with those he trusts, that he has a wide view of the world--seeing 'pizza' as a character--and that he can create.
More, more, more...
Oh, and I tend to be an IST(P/J). For me the P/J call is about 50/50, depending on mood or context.
Strangely, some of the attitudes that 'typically describe' that combination are ones I 'taught myself', or rather, encouraged in myself because I thought they were signs of a Leader/Champion, which I always identified with.
I'm an IN(T/F)P. More "N" (intuitive, imaginative, impractical) than anything else.
I hated school also. I have music running through my head continually ( right now it's Jim Morrison singing LA Woman, probably triggered by reading the word "mojo" elsewhere on your blog ). When I first heard the band Phish, I was surprised at how much it sounded like the previously unknown music in my head.
My biggest problem with school was work that didn't make sense to me - I could easily and happily use algebra in my physics or astronomy classes, but the same algebra problems presented as a problem set in math class was intolerable to me, and I would just ignore it. I failed that class.
Even thinking about school makes me angry, even now (I'm 30). I am watching my daughter for any signs of the same problems in her life, and I'm going to offer her any alternatives I can to the conventional school experience.
Why I should have found geometry a bit more relevant.
I got a D.
In light, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.
For those of you who follow the general rule of never shooting a camera flash into a mirror - you should pay attention to the angle at which you are actually aiming that flash. If you shoot straight in, the light comes straight back. Light travels in a straight line.
If you would like to use a hand held flash and bounce the light off the ceiling or off the wall in order to illuminate the subject, then a bit of understanding of geometry might help to know at what angle to aim your flash instead of having the light falling behind your subject. Makes great silhouettes when done wrong.
So I learned Geometry the hard way. Really. And it could have been much simpler.
Learning some mathematical formulas serves one well when applied to situations. It might be nice to hold geometry class in a pool hall or a photo studio. Hopefully all 30 kids will have some form of interest, but it is highly unlikely that a poolhall will ever serve as a classroom.
I did well in algebra however. What I learned helped my husband build a futon platform by me calculating the space between the wooden slats algebraically.
Same goes for learning grammar and puctuation. The rules can be applied to all forms of written communication. It is not something unto itself for its own sake.
I just don't think that it is all togther possible to teach a method through the myriad ways that one may eventually be able to apply those methods. It's a conundrum though. A certain portion of the students will be bored because they see no relevance or at a particular age, don't plan on being a physicist, astronomer or what have you. It's a kind of myopia that plagues us all.
I didn't read all the comments above, but...
I'm similar, in that I think of myself as a rather lazy person, but that's mainly because I don't like wasting time with busy work. I'm quite successful, and I have the determination (or whatever) to push through school. I just don't go to class much and spend the time I'm there arguing with the profs.
Anyway, what's interesting (and what I think may add to this discussion) is that my short attention span and varied focus is reflected in my writing. I try to be concise and to make every point only once. I try to write things I can follow myself, which means short.
That's all. I thought I had more to say, but I don't.
Truthfully, there's nothing really new about Dean's rant about education. It's chapter and verse in the gospel according to dean. "School sucks!" but I disagree with one point especially, and that's the idea that somehow college students who are treated like "customers" will get a better education, or even a sufficient education.
I see this all the time at two different colleges - one large, public and the other small private. The students who come in with the "customer" mentality are frequently not looking to *learn,* but to get the piece of paper on the wall. They are the people who complain because the test is too long or they have to dig up academic research, who keep a running count of how many days they have left to skip.
I like the academy. I've spent much of my life in it, and I'm getting a phd. But I also work advising a student newspaper, teaching practical classes. The university provides structure to my rambling, chaotic mind. Not always, and not perfectly, but most of the time.
I agree that education - especially "higher" education - is not for everyone. Unfortunately, that's the marketing scam we've been given by the business world. These are the tickets to the realm. Sucks, but unless you want to flip about on the shoals, it's the hoops you've got to jump through.
Well, at least you admit that it's a scam. ;-)
But my own experience is that instructors who don't treat their students like paying customers tend to be high-handed, condescending, and more likely to make their students jump through hoops than concern themselves with whether or not their students are actually learning something. Not to mention that they are most likely to be dismissive of student complaints.
Your mileage may vary, and all that. ;-)
Is the problem the education that you don't need or is it the society that demands the piece of paper that claims your education?
Is it a chicken or an egg dilemma?
I would say, Observer, that my #1 problem is with a social milieu in which real-world experience means less than a degree. I see too many cases, myself included, where a very smart, literate, competent and experienced person loses a job or cannot be promoted without a degree.
And too many cases where the schools themselves, or the teachers within them, refuse to do much to simply allow a student to prove his knowledge without being required to slag through pointless assignments. I recently took a grade deduction in a class because I refused to do a 30 minute homework assignment on how to use the Windows Explorer to copy delete and rename files. For God's Sake, I'm a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer! But no--do the exercise, or lose the grade. I find such things utterly ridiculous.
But there is all the rest: the assumption that school is what makes you smart, that a degree necessarily equals knowledge, that so many are going to university now that the quality of the education has diminished, that getting a liberal education in the universities is so hard anymore, that so much of the institution is focused on process rather than results, and more.
It is also a simple reality that I despise sitting in classrooms and always have. Furthermore, I learn less from lectures than any other form of knowledge transmission. Yet the modern university is still dominated, absolutely dominated, by a centuries-old learning method: a teacher at the front with a blackboard, lecturing students.
We know--we know for a FACT--that some learners do not do well in these environments. Yet many universities are very inflexible and offer little in the way of alternatives for such students. Rather, it seeks to blame the students for responding poorly to the university's methods.
So as you can see I'm unhappy on multiple levels. The good news is, however, that it looks like I'll be transferring to a school where I no longer have to sit in a classroom. I am very exited about that. I hate classrooms.
But my own experience is that instructors who don't treat their students like paying customers tend to be high-handed, condescending, and more likely to make their students jump through hoops than concern themselves with whether or not their students are actually learning something. Not to mention that they are most likely to be dismissive of student complaints.
I find that the instructors who treat their students as individuals who are cooperating in a learning enterprise are the best. But respect flows both ways. I've worked in enough retail to know that the old saw "the customer is always right" is B.S. unfortunately, the students who think of themselves as "customers" (and the parents who think of themselves as "customers," another problem entirely) don't understand that. Professors who adopt the customer model will eventually become the Wal-Marts of education.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree; I already see the Wal-Mart mentality, and it's not from instructors who respect the fact that I'm paying them for their services. The ones who respect that, who get that, tend to be more flexible, more open, and more concerned if they see struggling. The ones who don't tend to be the most rigid and inflexible and condescending.
But perhaps it's our interpretations that differe rather than the attitude. I can't say for sure. I do know that when I was a professional instructor, I always viewed my presence in the classroom as something that everyone there had paid a considerable sum of money for, and felt it was my duty to be sure they were getting their money's worth. I helped a lot of people, and always took pride in that--and was shocked to get into the university environment and rarely see a sign of that same attitude.
I dunno, I'm changing schools so it's going to be a non-issue I hope. No more classroom for me! (As a student anyway. I'll probably go back to teaching someday.)
I don't think you're wrong in the least on the social milieu, however, it's another thing to expect the university to be a haven from the same attitudes.
It's a nice preparation on how to behave in the 'real' world, eh?
The teaching model is systemic and as it becomes more corporatized, it becomes even more rigid.
It is true that when you teach, you learn a great deal more than when you are student. It's putting to practice what you learned.
But the view isn't rosier on the other side. If and when you do teach, I'll be interested in your posts on the 'customer' attitudes.
A lot of the 'problems' runs both ways.
Here's a student complaint: "I didn't appreciate having to learn to use my camera through trial and error."
What was this one looking for? The opposite model of what you're seeking and you are both in the same class.
I tired to give my 'paying customers' their money's worth. That was my thinking- making sure that they were getting everything out of me that they could. 3.5 hours of getting breathing beings to announce their presence through participation made me wonder what exactly they were paying me for. Certainly not to stand there and talk ad nauseum, but with a welcome of silence broken by the ring of a cell phone, one is hard pressed to know how to teach wisely. Only years of experience might offer respite from frustration. On the other hand, those instructors who actually do teach with alternative methods are of a certain generation and type and are starting to find that their methods are no longer appreciated either. Go figure.
Unfortunately, real learning isn't about knowing the material as it is presented in any form, but only through it's application. The more people see it as passing the true/false, multiple question, information passing as knowledge model, the more we will see graduates who know everything but understand nothing.
Higher education used to be for the priveleged. Now it's for everyone. If one wants an education tailored to their needs, then one has to pay for it. If one can't, well...
That's where life just isn't fair now.
You want entry into a world that requires the password of diploma. In this world of 'guaranteeing outcome', this is the rite of passage. The folks who run that world decided that you don't get to pass it over. You can't be guaranteed that since you decided to jump through the hoop for the business world that at least you won't find the same goofy thinking in the halls of academe, Shrangri-la it is not. Just more of the same.
On a similar note: Having worked in the business world, they are more interested in paying me for my body occupying a space then my actually getting a project done ahead of schedule. The project was deemed to cost X based on X days. I was able to complete said project in X -2 days. Is it wrong to want to still be paid X?
Is it the knowledge or the labor that is not being valued?
Dean wrote:
I learn almost nothing from listening to a person speak.
...When I ask [a] question, I generally have an urge to hit people over the head with a club when they fail to answer me in a straightforward fashion.
...In any case, my mind tends to tune out others when they speak, and this has been true for as long as I can remember.
...I honestly believe I am incapable of listening to all b[ut] the most compelling and exciting lecturer speak for more than five minutes without my mind wandering off. Couple this with the fact that I've usually read the material and don't need the lecture in most classes, and you can see why I feel the classroom to be a terrifically dull waste of my time, most of the time.
Tim the Soldier wrote:
(despite your humility)...
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
And let me guess, Dean...you interrupt people a lot, too, because you "know what they're going to say next"? Where have I met that type before?...oh, I know! I'm working for him! **eyeroll**
Spare me from "geniuses" who think that "that's the way my mind works" entitles them to treat the rest of humanity with poorly-concealed impatience simply because the rest of humanity thinks in a "mundane" fashion.