I recently went back to school and I can’t say it’s been the easiest transition. Unfortunately, these days a B.A. just doesn’t get much for you in terms of career options. But it was not as easy as flowing somewhat seamlessly like I did between high school and college. Mostly because I’ve forgotten how many hoops you have to jump through in order to get what you want. For example, one of my teachers has decided that if we have questions on assignments that are to be turned in, we are not allowed to ask for help. When I asked her how I was supposed to learn much of anything if I could not ask questions and she said that the turn in questions were to show what I knew, not for learning purposes. Hmm… I think our sense of what school (and college level academics especially) is for has gone by the way side.
What ever happened to the idea of nurturing the love of learning and helping students explore and learn on their own? Education should not be made up of a series of hoops to jump through! This simply defined “smarts” as knowing how to play the game.
There’s a great speech about the education system and the concept that it is making students less creative at the following link: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html.
It’s only 12 minutes or so but is packed will important insights about academia and whether “schooling” as we know it now is going to be of any value in our futures.
