Paradigms
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"General education is always alluring, at least to university presidents. In moments of chaos, everyone at the top loves a plan. And this, right now, is surely a moment of chaos.
The federal government is proposing a ranking of universities and colleges. New digital platforms threaten to break down the bricks-and-mortar approach to learning. Public agitation about student debt and college tuition is on the rise. And the humanities, again, are in crisis.
In this landscape, general education is a “time-tested” educational ideal and, increasingly, a sort of diplomatic maneuver, its presumption of rigor addressing public concerns about accountability and quality."
"General education is thus an all-encompassing (and well-intentioned) form of intellectual engineering"
"Never let schooling interfere with education."
"Never underestimate the energy and dynamism of youth."
Add: reference of Elon Musk on Unschooling
"In Finland, there is no homework. All work is done at school. Learning does extend past school life but does not need to manifest itself into home work."
Andrew Carnegie is quoted as saying,
“A college education unfits rather than fits men to affairs.”
The author draws attention to clarifying the prospect of college for varying disciplines,
"Furthermore, I believe, for a clergyman, a lawyer or a doctor, whose profession is largely speculative, bookish or theoretic, a college education is not only advisable but essential if he is to take a front rank in his profession in these strenuous modern days. But these considerations do not fully apply to the case of the business man or merchant."
notes how the adoption of new systems has changed the career landscape,
"[...] As constitutional, scientific government has come to supplant the feudal system, so the "consolidation era" in business has come to supplant the old system. And this new "consolidation era" has come to say."
concluding with,
"[...] The struggle itself is a school for the development of energy and character. It is true now more than ever, the opportunity does not make the man, the man makes the opportunity."
"The architecture establishes what is “essential” for students to learn, and requires that they take it up, usually at the start of their lives as undergraduates. Its focus is breadth, not depth."
"[..] a sort of “plug and chug” approach. This leaves the intellectual growth of each student to be managed, at worst, by an impersonal structure and can turn checklists into false equivalents for major breakthroughs."
"The emphasis on structure and rigidity to enforce breadth has consequences. We’ve turned a handful of elective courses into the equivalent of “free time” and pushed students to hustle through their first few years as if they were working off a checklist."
"Students in the GISP preferred to focus on “individual development” as opposed to the transmission of “a certain body of knowledge and skills,” which they saw as “the essence of a narrow professionalism.” What they wanted, in short, was a humanistic focus on self-discovery."
"why should risk taking and its intellectual rewards be for only the few elite institutions? Or a few small, funky colleges? We should be fostering self-discovery and critical thinking for every student; approaching them as adults capable of making informed, exploratory choices and not as “kids” who require helicopter parents to monitor their progress."
"There is no question but that social, economic, educational, and legislative trends point to a need for educational flexibility without the sacrifice of quality."
"They require experimentation and study. And that, in turn, requires building a community around strong collaboration itself. It doesn’t help us much if each person goes off and tries to start a wiki on their own. To learn what works and what doesn’t, we need to share our experiences and be willing to test new things — new goals, new social structures, new software."
"If societies operated more like brain-storming sessions where any idea is welcomed and is fully discussed in a fully open fashion, some very good ideas could be adopted and tried (at least in an analysis, or an experiment, or a modeling exercise, or a simulation, or a pilot study) and proven, or disproven, to have merit, and finally, if meritorious, implemented; then our world would be a better place."
"If I had come here five years ago and told you I was going to make an entire encyclopedia by putting up a bunch of web pages that anyone could edit, you would have been able to raise a thousand objections: It will get filled with vandalism! The content will be unreliable! No one will do that work for free! And you would have been right to. These were completely reasonable expectations at the time. But here’s the funny thing: it worked anyway. the reason Wikipedia works is because of the community, a group of people that took the project as their own and threw themselves into making it succeed. [...] They do it because they care about the site enough to feel responsible. They get upset when someone tries to mess it up."