Take a look at this YouTube video from Dan Brown: "An Open Letter to Educators":
Dan dropped out of college because, as he said, “my schooling was interfering with my education.” As he describes a typical college class and makes a passionate and positive plea for real education for the 21st century, do you find yourself in sympathy? I certainly do. When information is a click away, don’t we really need thinkers, innovators, visionaries, developers, creators and solutionaries far more than we need memorizers? And shouldn’t school foster and instill these critical qualities as it’s primary goal, rather than perpetuate the rote memorization approach to learning.
I’ve posted James Randi’s TED talk before, but it’s worth a look again. Graduating a generation who can spew out facts, but not think critically about them; who know information, but not how to tell if it’s accurate; who believe what they’re told and fail to take responsibility for the truth of those beliefs, is a potentially dangerous generation, especially at a time when critical and creative thinking are the keys to a safe and healthy future. Graduating a generation of solutionaries, however, ready and able to think deeply AND broadly, so that we can create a restored and humane world, is a worthy goal for schooling.
It’s nice to see Dan Brown thinking critically about his own education and taking responsibility for it.
Zoe Weil, President of the Institute for Humane Education
Author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education
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1 comment:
I'm sorry, but how long did this man stay in college? One semester? Two? Maybe I'm being too mean...I didn't really listen to my professors until my senior year of undergrad. Now as a grad student and TA, I see where they are coming from. And let me tell you this: Mr. Brown is not saying anything the education system doesn't already know.
I teach introductory Speech courses. This is a gen ed course required by certain majors; if you were to make a bet on which courses were most uninspired and meant to shuffle students through the system, it would be a gen ed, required course.
Our testing is hardly based on memorizing terms. We focus on teaching students the most effective way of delivering a speech, in terms of structure, logic, word choice, etc. As an introductory course, we also focus on something Mr. Brown seems to think most people can do in this age, but which students surprisingly know little about: how to find good information from credible sources. Our stated goal is to teach our students effective communication so that they can get their ideas and opinions out there, and also so they can learn why they should or shouldn't trust a certain speaker.
To be honest, it is the students who are more about memorization and grades. I can't tell you how much breath educators lose sighing at the student who e-mails them constantly to make sure they got all the points they needed rather than showing a understanding of what they learned.
I'm sorry if Mr. Brown felt his education was all the teaching of facts. Perhaps he didn't give college a long enough try so he could get past the basics and actually, you know, work towards application. And I don't care what he says: information is not free. The information many professors have to share cannot be found online; you pay for the worthwhile experience of working with a person who has made a certain subject their life study, the same way you pay to talk to a doctor about your symptoms instead of diagnosing yourself via WebMD. And anyone who has studied at a college knows their library collections and access to specific journal collections doesn't come cheap.
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