On Stupidity 1 and 2

The excerpts below from On Stupidity 1, and On Stupidity 2, from successive issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education, illustrate some of the points concerning education that have been made here at Al Fin over the past few years.

It is my job, as I see it, to combat ignorance and foster the skills and knowledge needed to produce intelligent, ethical, and productive citizens. I see too many students who are:

*Primarily focused on their own emotions — on the primacy of their "feelings" — rather than on analysis supported by evidence.

*Uncertain what constitutes reliable evidence, thus tending to use the most easily found sources uncritically.

*Convinced that no opinion is worth more than another: All views are equal.

*Uncertain about academic honesty and what constitutes plagiarism. (I recently had a student defend herself by claiming that her paper was more than 50 percent original, so she should receive that much credit, at least.)

*Unable to follow or make a sustained argument.

*Uncertain about spelling and punctuation (and skeptical that such skills matter).

*Hostile to anything that is not directly relevant to their career goals, which are vaguely understood.

*Increasingly interested in the social and athletic above the academic, while "needing" to receive very high grades.

*Not really embarrassed at their lack of knowledge and skills.

*Certain that any academic failure is the fault of the professor rather than the student.
_OS1

An interesting list of common and sometimes surprising deficits of modern students, faced by concerned professors today. In "On Stupidity 2" the author goes on:

...today's students must also learn — just as we all did — how to adapt to generations that came before them, since, except in school, there are usually more people outside of one's generation than in it. Age differences may be the most underrated form of diversity in education.

One of the consequences of K-12 schooling (and of college, to a lesser extent) is the creation of a narrow peer group. That segregation by age impairs the ability of young people to relate to anyone outside their cohort, as anyone with teenage children or first-year college students knows all too well. _OS2

The author of the two essays is concerned about the possible adverse effects of converging computing/communications technologies on the ability of students to reason and learn. Given the unprecedented nature of many of these technologies, that is not surprising. No one knows what to expect, long term.

But it is clear that today's fossilised institutions of education are innately ill-prepared to adjust to changing technologies. The author of the 2 pieces above is a tenured professor and thus entrenched in the institutional structure which itself is part of the problem. On would not expect him to see beyond the limitations of his training, just as one does not expect an ocean dwelling fish to be familiar with navigating city streets.

Education is supposed to be preparing students for the future they will have to live in. How is it doing?