Mike:
I am yawning and make that a BIG YAWN (sorry for the excessive
noise).
Here is the mistaken assertion from the editorial...
"Both newspapers and universities have traditionally relied on
selling hard-to-come-by information."
You can walk into any chain bookstore and buy a copy of the Bible
(King James or other), Darwin's "Origin of Species", Richard
Feynman's "Lectures on Physics," and the complete works of
Shakespeare. A truly complete education is available for under
$1000.
What newspapers and universities are selling is "the opportunity"
to learn how to tell the difference between Dan Brown's "DaVinci
Code" and true mysteries like the uncovering of DNA encoding and
how they will affect our lives.
I grew up when the "fear and hope" (depending on your group) was
that televised lectures on Public TV were going give you
knowledge and that would replace the cost of attending college.
Here was a case of the government actually trying to help you
bypass the cost of a college education. Nothing of the sort ever
happened. One reason is that having a copy and reading the King
J, Feynman, Darwin, or Shakespeare does not teach an unprepared
person about Christianity, physics, evolution, or social issues.
Nor will watching a lecture or reenactment on YouTube or
watching a PP slide show a dozen times replace the classroom
experience for an unprepared person.
What happens, importantly, in class is that students ask
idiosyncratic, personal questions which call on a lot of
experience to frame an effective answer. We have all experienced
the futility of trouble-shooting computer FAQs that don't contain
anything related to our question. A good answer often involves a
search pattern for relevant information. Minimally-experienced
faculty don't have that knowledge. In the classroom to reach
other students, the trick is framing the question in a more
general manner and showing how the answer is part of that general
issue.
I look to mechanized education programs taking over ("meet George
Jetson") when I get a personal air transporter, a robot who cooks
and cleans for me, I get universal health care in the USA (issue
may not apply in certain non-USA localities), and live in a
pollution-neutral environment. I am not against mechanized
educational programs, I am strongly in favor of good ones. But I
am not worried that they are available now and will take over soon.
Mike Palij wrote:
A curious article in the in Washington Post about how Colleges,
as we currently know them with buildings and campuses, may
be gone in 10 to 20 years as online courses serve as inexpensive
alternatives; see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091104312_pf.html
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
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Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. steel...@appstate.edu
Professor
Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
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