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Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

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Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#81

Post by tokenadult »

superuser2 wrote: post #80
Mikeb85 wrote: post #70

I was expecting the worst judging from the comments here, but it's actually an excellent essay (or article, or whatever you want to call it). I personally agree. University should be more about learning and becoming better thinkers than simply learning a few facts and getting a piece of paper. Pretty much none of the students I interact with care about 'learning', or any form of critical thinking. They want the profs…

This is a matter of institutional culture. You'll find it in schools that are country clubs or low-cost mass-appeal credential factories. You won't find it so much in private schools with reputations for nerdiness and difficulty.

private schools with reputations for nerdiness and difficulty

Which schools are those? As a homeschooling parent, who emphasizes to my children that they should THINK, I would definitely encourage my children to apply to schools (public or private) that are genuinely nerdy and difficult. I'd be delighted to hear suggestions of good colleges and universities like that.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#82

Post by pbh101 »

tokenadult wrote: post #81
superuser2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a matter of institutional culture. You'll find it in schools that are country clubs or low-cost mass-appeal credential factories. You won't find it so much in private schools with reputations for nerdiness and difficulty.

private schools with reputations for nerdiness and difficulty Which schools are those? As a homeschooling parent, who emphasizes to my children that they should THINK, I would definitely encourage my children to apply to schools (public or private) that are genuinely nerdy and difficult. I'd be delighted to hear suggestions of good colleges and universities like that.

Harvey Mudd, CalTech, Rose Hulman, Carnegie Mellon, from what I've heard and experienced. But I expect you have heard of these institutions, and they are all on the technical side.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#83

Post by mooreds »

pnathan wrote: post #63

If this is news to you, dear HN reader, then you really haven't been paying attention to the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States. I believe the big work to hit the popular mind initially was Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, which essentially says the same thing , but the disease was slightly less advanced then. As an interesting linguistic note: the liberal arts were conceiv…

Loved the reference to 'Gorgias', which, incidentally, I read in my college days at a liberal arts school.

Rhetoric isn't the path to truth, but it can sure help with power.

Here it is online: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html

Edit: added link to 'Gorgias'.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#84

Post by zeveb »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #15
ColinWright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the massive escalation in fees, and the ubiquity of phones, with instant access to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more, do you really think things haven't changed?

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

Y'know, some people read that and think, 'gosh, old folks always complain about kids; kids must not really be getting any worse!' I wonder if kids really have been getting worse for millennia…

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#85

Post by geofft »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #70

I was expecting the worst judging from the comments here, but it's actually an excellent essay (or article, or whatever you want to call it). I personally agree. University should be more about learning and becoming better thinkers than simply learning a few facts and getting a piece of paper. Pretty much none of the students I interact with care about 'learning', or any form of critical thinking. They want the profs…

I think there's a valuable role for such an institution in the world, but I'm not sure why it should be the university.

The vast majority of people who attend university don't really care about optimizing for that goal. The vast majority of people who require university attendance as a prerequisite for something else don't really, either. And the vast majority of people who provide outside funding to universities don't: they fund research, not teaching. And as a result, the vast majority of successful employees in this system are those who at best want the university to be a place where faculty and graduate students learn things, and only secondarily where undergraduates learn things.

The change to make universities, as a system, be about people who specifically care about being a better thinker would be greatly disruptive to society, and for what benefit? Those who are interested in becoming better thinkers can go to a different sort of institution.

Arguably there is such an institution already, namely graduate school. That you have to go through undergrad first is not particularly more onerous than that you have to go through grade school first. Grade school sucks a lot for people who care about learning.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#87

Post by danieltillett »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #70

I was expecting the worst judging from the comments here, but it's actually an excellent essay (or article, or whatever you want to call it). I personally agree. University should be more about learning and becoming better thinkers than simply learning a few facts and getting a piece of paper. Pretty much none of the students I interact with care about 'learning', or any form of critical thinking. They want the profs…

When I was a professor I tried an experiment a few times of offering extra classes during the lunch break. These covered interesting and important areas that we just didn't have time to get to in class. The topics covered weren't on the final exam and were totally voluntary. Out of a class of 100 I would get around 10 or so students come to these classes which were more tutorial than lecture. It was great experience teaching students just interested in learning.

The most interesting aspect of the exercise was the students were drawn pretty evenly from across the performance spectrum. There were students who got A's in everything, but there were also a number who we're just scraping through the degree. I was quite surprised at which students came.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#88

Post by superuser2 »

tokenadult wrote: post #81
superuser2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a matter of institutional culture. You'll find it in schools that are country clubs or low-cost mass-appeal credential factories. You won't find it so much in private schools with reputations for nerdiness and difficulty.

private schools with reputations for nerdiness and difficulty Which schools are those? As a homeschooling parent, who emphasizes to my children that they should THINK, I would definitely encourage my children to apply to schools (public or private) that are genuinely nerdy and difficult. I'd be delighted to hear suggestions of good colleges and universities like that.

MIT, UChicago, Rice, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, WashU, Middlebury, Berkeley, etc.

Students who are primarily interested in prestige have better options. What's left at schools like these are the masochists who actually want to be challenged academically and surrounded by peers at or above their intellectual level.

I'd say Chicago is the paradigm case, but I'm biased :). One of its best features is an extraordinarily large and rigorous general ed requirement ("the Core") which means even a computer science student gets a substantial liberal arts education. There are paths through the Core with a higher tolerance for bullshit, but they're frowned upon. I took the more philosophy-leaning sequences and loved them. Lots of emphasis on close reading, lucid discussion, critical analysis, and clear argumentative writing. It has also been my experience that students merely looking to check the "college" box with minimal effort are not mainstream and don't tend to succeed.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#89

Post by aswanson »

pnathan wrote: post #63

If this is news to you, dear HN reader, then you really haven't been paying attention to the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States. I believe the big work to hit the popular mind initially was Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, which essentially says the same thing , but the disease was slightly less advanced then. As an interesting linguistic note: the liberal arts were conceiv…

Amen. I am in the process of educating myself in the classic accomplishments in the humanities after realizing as much.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#90

Post by Domenic_S »

pnathan wrote: post #63

If this is news to you, dear HN reader, then you really haven't been paying attention to the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States. I believe the big work to hit the popular mind initially was Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, which essentially says the same thing , but the disease was slightly less advanced then. As an interesting linguistic note: the liberal arts were conceiv…

> the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States.

Not that you're wrong, but TFA is talking about Canada:

> I wish to speak about third- and fourth-tier Canadian schools that are primarily undergraduate institutions.

which I find interesting.

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