Education: October 2003 Archives

A public-school faculty came up with the following at an Imagineering [sic] session recently. My mother-in-law pointed out that "most of these goals, even the more stupidly expressed ones, would be accomplished by closing down the government schools and getting parents to homeshool."

Somebody's tax money is paying for this, you people!
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I want my school to be a place where …

-Students exhibit shared responsibility to grow academically, emotionally, and
socially.
-We are safe.
-Classes are small (no more than 20).
-Learning is exciting and challenging.
-Testing does not take priority over learning.
-Everyone looks forward to coming every day.

A student in my philosophy class argued yesterday that we can't know if invertebrates think deep thoughts just because they haven't built up any civilizations, written books, or discussed philosophy.

Maybe, he said, they are communicating telepathically and have decided that a life in the mud at the bottom of the ocean is better than our wars, poverty, &c.

This would be less of a problem if I thought the student were arguing for the sake of annoying me, but he seemed to be earnest in his beliefs.

We're starting the Summa tomorrow.

The other issue in higher education is that the liberal arts curriculum is dead. I managed two music degrees at a Virginia university without ever taking a foreign language, philosophy, logic, or a good natural science course. Instead, I had to take a bogus course in Sociology (a bogus subject in the first place) and my only foray into maths at university was called MATH 106: Concepts of Math. We studied percentages and voting and other issues appropriate to a seventh-grade curriculum.

I knew at the time that this was not a classical education and doubled up on my literature coursework and seminars to compensate, but most of my confreres did not. Granted, we were all spending the majority of our days in rehearsals and in the practice rooms (some actually practicing), but most of the other music students looked at "gen ed" requirements as something to get out of the way as quickly as possible. No one cared if we learned anything, and none of our advisors seemed to care if we did or not.

The bottom line is that every university student should be taught a core set of liberal arts courses, and, if my experience is indicative, few are.

I will stop, as I feel an E.D. Hirsh rant coming on.