5 ms·

Without acceptance criteria -- some neutrally-given test that yields a yes or no -- you can't really measure the function of something. Education has been notor

Without acceptance criteria -- some neutrally-given test that yields a yes or no -- you can't really measure the function of something. Education has been notorious for refusing to create or abide by acceptance criteria. So it becomes a brand-name game. You pay for the brand, you spend some time getting indoctrinated (most likely to how important this particular brand is) and you get your piece of paper. Somebody said once that the purpose of education is to create new habits. So, for instance, if you are an English speaker and develop a habit of reading a good Russian novel once a year, that might be an excellent habit to have. Or if you develop a habit of reading a dozen computer books a year, or perhaps you develop a habit of cross-checking politically-slanted stories you agree with. And so on. Lots of great habits that you can form. Some subset of these constitute what we call "critical thinking," which everybody seems to think is important. There are a bunch of entrepreneurial habits that I'd love to make sure folks had. If you want a job after college, developing great people, marketing, and networking habits would be awesome. But I don't think anybody wants to seriously start talking about what habits college graduates should mostly exhibit. To do that would cause controversy. Colleges are very much dependent on public dollars (at least in the states) and I don't think they are ready for the political firestorm that would occur once you start actually trying to define the thing that we're all paying for. It's not a bubble, except for the part about more and more money goes for less and less return. The problem is that there is no "thing" that is being returned. There's no bad guys here, but it's much more like a con: you pay increasing amounts of money for this intangible thing where there's no real way to determine if what you got was what you wanted. You don't really know if it's worth what you spent, because the seller is purposely keeping you in the dark about the value, continuing to assure you that this type of purchase at these rates is absolutely necessary. In fact, as time goes on they get more and more insistent that this thing is absolutely necessary -- at any price. That kind of building up of expectations, then jacking the price, then delivery of something that could roughly be considered what was needed but isn't enough, repeat-and-rinse, is much more indicative of a con (Disclaimer: I don't mean to imply intent here, and I also don't mean to imply outright fraud. Just trying to find the best metaphor. I also realize that I am making a large generalization, and all generalizations are false. Caveat Emptor.)

ebiester 16y ago
It's not that education doesn't want acceptance criteria; rather, any criteria that could be defined could easily be gamed. To nearly every professor I've met, the criteria should be something similar to this: A student is introduced to a wide variety of subjects and challenged by a variety of views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was born; such so that an undergraduate student leaves better prepared to participate in educated society and make wise decisions in civic and public discourse. Secondly, a student has been immersed in a discipline to the extent that they can read and understand literature in the field, and that student can apply the training in learning one field to conquer further fields in their future life outside of academia. In other words, the goal of college is to create a "well-rounded" individual who has "learned how to learn" and has "seen the world past the one in which they were raised." Now, how do we operationalize this? Note that Doctoral students have comprehensive exams and dissertations. Colleges are obviously not averse to testing. A multiple choice exam isn't going to cut it here, though.
- hugh3 16y ago
  To nearly every professor I've met, the criteria should be something similar to this: A student is introduced to a wide variety of subjects and challenged by a variety of views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was born; such so that an undergraduate student leaves better prepared to participate in educated society and make wise decisions in civic and public discourse. I am rather iffy on this idea, it seems like an excuse for indoctrination. More often than not, the "views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was raised" turn out to be "the professor's own views", with other other views getting sorely neglected. edit: It also arrogantly presupposes the professor's intellectual environment to be less bubble-like than the students'. Anyone who has spent time around professors knows this is unlikely to be true.
  - ebiester 16y ago
    Because, of course, people are completely incapable of forming their own opinions when given a set of arguments. :) The point is that the student is exposed to multiple viewpoints, and gains experience interacting with various arguments. That even includes weird things like queer theory (which I must say, makes a lot of sense as a gay man. I can't say how much it would relate to someone cisgendered and straight.)

ebiester 16y ago

It's not that education doesn't want acceptance criteria; rather, any criteria that could be defined could easily be gamed. To nearly every professor I've met, the criteria should be something similar to this: A student is introduced to a wide variety of subjects and challenged by a variety of views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was born; such so that an undergraduate student leaves better prepared to participate in educated society and make wise decisions in civic and public discourse. Secondly, a student has been immersed in a discipline to the extent that they can read and understand literature in the field, and that student can apply the training in learning one field to conquer further fields in their future life outside of academia. In other words, the goal of college is to create a "well-rounded" individual who has "learned how to learn" and has "seen the world past the one in which they were raised." Now, how do we operationalize this? Note that Doctoral students have comprehensive exams and dissertations. Colleges are obviously not averse to testing. A multiple choice exam isn't going to cut it here, though.

hugh3 16y ago
To nearly every professor I've met, the criteria should be something similar to this: A student is introduced to a wide variety of subjects and challenged by a variety of views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was born; such so that an undergraduate student leaves better prepared to participate in educated society and make wise decisions in civic and public discourse. I am rather iffy on this idea, it seems like an excuse for indoctrination. More often than not, the "views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was raised" turn out to be "the professor's own views", with other other views getting sorely neglected. edit: It also arrogantly presupposes the professor's intellectual environment to be less bubble-like than the students'. Anyone who has spent time around professors knows this is unlikely to be true.
- ebiester 16y ago
  Because, of course, people are completely incapable of forming their own opinions when given a set of arguments. :) The point is that the student is exposed to multiple viewpoints, and gains experience interacting with various arguments. That even includes weird things like queer theory (which I must say, makes a lot of sense as a gay man. I can't say how much it would relate to someone cisgendered and straight.)