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> No, I don't think that's fair. There's no "we." Everyone -- students and institutions -- have a different answer to "what is the purpose of an education?" We

> No, I don't think that's fair. There's no "we." Everyone -- students and institutions -- have a different answer to "what is the purpose of an education?" We have different answers, to be sure, but how is that answer expressed? The only thing my parents cared about when I chose my college and major was, "What kind of job can you get with that degree?" I was on good terms with the faculty and staff of my major and they felt compelled to acknowledge that most people worry about having a job when they leave school and thus, that faculty and staff felt obligated to explain the marketability of their taught skills, even if they had to go digging and networking with employers to find such answers. You claim that, in the US, we have been experimenting for 150 years, but you only provide as an example your own, personal anecdotal experience as someone who has become a co-founding entrepreneur. You don't even provide UChicago's answer (which, had you done so, would have been an invitation for other alumni to disagree with you). I don't see any meaningful experimentation happening. I see universities struggling to be everything to everyone, and not really having any idea how to do it anymore, except to provide for the lowest common denominator: the need to make a living after parental support runs out.

brianchu 14y ago
UChicago has a well-known reputation for being academic and focused on cultivating a "life of the mind," which is probably why jfarmer neglected specify an answer. And your criticism of his expression of a personal anecdote is unwarranted. Virtually all of the opinions in this thread are going to be based on personal experience. As far as I'm aware, there are no statistics elucidating "the purpose of college." Your last paragraph, for example, is entirely a personal opinion/observation.
- saraid216 14y ago
  My criticism was that his example of 150 years' worth of experimentation was captured in a single personal experience. Unless he's at least 170 years old, what he said was basically ridiculous. His reply is slightly better, but I'll get to that in a direct reply to him.
jfarmer 14y ago
Well, first, this "I see universities struggling to be everything to everyone" was exactly my point. :D For some people, education is about "jobs," for others its about other things, and as a result universities have dozens of conflicting mandates. I was rejecting the idea that we've somehow converged, as a society or whatever, on a consensus that education = jobs. That was not my educational experience. That's not the educational experience of people who attended an Ivy League school. But I grew up poor and rural, so I know the flip side...viscerally. I meant to draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a situation where universities are directionless because we've asked them to be everything to everyone. DBC is not everything to everyone. We hope that DBC will make it easier for universities to stop trying to be everything to everyone, too. "You claim that, in the US, we have been experimenting for 150 years, but you only provide as an example your own, personal anecdotal experience as someone who has become a co-founding entrepreneur." Happy to provide resources. :) I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform" http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles-School/dp/0743203267 http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles-School/dp/07... A video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T7jpyAG44k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T7jpyAG44k If you want names, I'd read up on the history of post-Civil War sociology, psychology, and philosophy in the US, especially the pragmatist tradition. Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to Dewey). Here's a William Torrey Harris quote: "The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places ... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world." Here's John Dewey: "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences" Also read up on Booker T. Washington and "industrial education." Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform" I'll do that. I haven't read any of Ravitch's work directly yet, and enough time has passed since I heard her speak that I don't remember her position reliably anymore. > Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to Dewey). I'm a fairly huge fan of John Dewey. I only barely hold back from calling myself a philosophical pragmatist in Dewey's tradition. On the other hand, I kinda recognize Harris' notion as a tradition I'd reject; Wikipedia's characterization of his supporters' arguments suggests that there isn't anything really useful in his ideas that doesn't require stripping it bare first. :P > Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago. But this is not experimentation. There is a difference between a thought experiment and an actual experiment. Schrodinger did not actually put a cat in a box and mysteriously wave his hands to express the quantum uncertainty of its aliveness. Yes, we have some tiny movements like Montessori schools or project-based learning or Quest to Learn or KIPP's character training or charter schools and so on and so on, but they make such an infinitesimal impact and are often so incomparable that it doesn't make sense to call it "experimentation". The fact that Will Wright, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos are all Montessori graduates, for instance, gets noticed sometimes but also gets mocked a portion of that. (That is, the term "Montessori graduate" is sometimes used derogatorily.) > I meant to draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a situation where universities are directionless because we've asked them to be everything to everyone. I don't think that the answer is to unbundle it, though. That's an easy, dare I say Silicon-Valley-esque response to a difficult and multifarious beast, but it's not necessarily the right one. I think that it'd be worthwhile to shed some of those things, yes, but for their invalidity or overgeneralizations on their own merits, rather than because they detract from a university's capacity to be itself. I am working on an answer myself, naturally... but I've so far declined to try to untangle the nature of a university on my own. It feels like putting the cart before the horse to do so. I've mostly held to a single, simple principle: a university experience should be optional. If people feel compelled to go to a university after some particular amount of basic education, such as high school, then the problems of a university are symptoms, not causes.

brianchu 14y ago

UChicago has a well-known reputation for being academic and focused on cultivating a "life of the mind," which is probably why jfarmer neglected specify an answer. And your criticism of his expression of a personal anecdote is unwarranted. Virtually all of the opinions in this thread are going to be based on personal experience. As far as I'm aware, there are no statistics elucidating "the purpose of college." Your last paragraph, for example, is entirely a personal opinion/observation.

saraid216 14y ago
My criticism was that his example of 150 years' worth of experimentation was captured in a single personal experience. Unless he's at least 170 years old, what he said was basically ridiculous. His reply is slightly better, but I'll get to that in a direct reply to him.

jfarmer 14y ago

Well, first, this "I see universities struggling to be everything to everyone" was exactly my point. :D For some people, education is about "jobs," for others its about other things, and as a result universities have dozens of conflicting mandates. I was rejecting the idea that we've somehow converged, as a society or whatever, on a consensus that education = jobs. That was not my educational experience. That's not the educational experience of people who attended an Ivy League school. But I grew up poor and rural, so I know the flip side...viscerally. I meant to draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a situation where universities are directionless because we've asked them to be everything to everyone. DBC is not everything to everyone. We hope that DBC will make it easier for universities to stop trying to be everything to everyone, too. "You claim that, in the US, we have been experimenting for 150 years, but you only provide as an example your own, personal anecdotal experience as someone who has become a co-founding entrepreneur." Happy to provide resources. :) I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform" http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles-School/dp/0743203267 http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles-School/dp/07... A video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T7jpyAG44k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T7jpyAG44k If you want names, I'd read up on the history of post-Civil War sociology, psychology, and philosophy in the US, especially the pragmatist tradition. Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to Dewey). Here's a William Torrey Harris quote: "The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places ... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world." Here's John Dewey: "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences" Also read up on Booker T. Washington and "industrial education." Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago.

saraid216 14y ago
> I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform" I'll do that. I haven't read any of Ravitch's work directly yet, and enough time has passed since I heard her speak that I don't remember her position reliably anymore. > Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to Dewey). I'm a fairly huge fan of John Dewey. I only barely hold back from calling myself a philosophical pragmatist in Dewey's tradition. On the other hand, I kinda recognize Harris' notion as a tradition I'd reject; Wikipedia's characterization of his supporters' arguments suggests that there isn't anything really useful in his ideas that doesn't require stripping it bare first. :P > Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago. But this is not experimentation. There is a difference between a thought experiment and an actual experiment. Schrodinger did not actually put a cat in a box and mysteriously wave his hands to express the quantum uncertainty of its aliveness. Yes, we have some tiny movements like Montessori schools or project-based learning or Quest to Learn or KIPP's character training or charter schools and so on and so on, but they make such an infinitesimal impact and are often so incomparable that it doesn't make sense to call it "experimentation". The fact that Will Wright, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos are all Montessori graduates, for instance, gets noticed sometimes but also gets mocked a portion of that. (That is, the term "Montessori graduate" is sometimes used derogatorily.) > I meant to draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a situation where universities are directionless because we've asked them to be everything to everyone. I don't think that the answer is to unbundle it, though. That's an easy, dare I say Silicon-Valley-esque response to a difficult and multifarious beast, but it's not necessarily the right one. I think that it'd be worthwhile to shed some of those things, yes, but for their invalidity or overgeneralizations on their own merits, rather than because they detract from a university's capacity to be itself. I am working on an answer myself, naturally... but I've so far declined to try to untangle the nature of a university on my own. It feels like putting the cart before the horse to do so. I've mostly held to a single, simple principle: a university experience should be optional. If people feel compelled to go to a university after some particular amount of basic education, such as high school, then the problems of a university are symptoms, not causes.