"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"
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.
"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/07...
A video: 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.