Maybe this is really off-topic, but the tone of all the posts about
learning has brought this to my mind. I've been influenced quite a bit
by the book "The Teenage Liberation Handbook:How to quit school and get
a real education" (author has slipped my mind, but if anyone's
interested I'll look). My children introduced me to the book, the year
the two oldest dropped out of high school to self-school. Now that they
both are safely on academic scholarships at the colleges of their
choice, in computer programming and environmental engineering, I can
safely say that it was the best thing they ever did and if the youngest,
who's still in high school, wants to do it also, I'm all for it.
By taking away the need to study when they were told to and what they
were told to, they rediscovered what learning just for the joy of
learning was. This was the point of the book-from elementary school we
train our children to learn for a reward-a star, an A, a scholarship-and
not because of the intrinsic value of knowledge. The author, a former
teacher, points out that even (no-especially) little children enjoy
learning; what many learn to dread is school, which is something else
entirely. My children were attending a private high school with all
kinds of advanced curricula and they hated it with a passion. Yet when
they dropped out, they worked harder than ever; it wasn't the work they
shunned, just the meaninglessness (in their eyes) of many of the things
they were asked to do. They still had exams after they dropped
out-they took AP exams and standardized test and the GED, all of which
they studied for themselves, but they also read many more books than
they would have in high school, learned quite a bit about business and
the "real world", and became much happier people. Now that they're in
college, they once again go to classes and take exams, but because they
chose this, and because they're studying what they want and know what it
takes to enjoy the priviledge of doing work one enjoys in the "real
world", I think they're much better off.
What I'm getting to here (honestly-this has a point) is that time off
the educational track can do wonders for the desire to learn. It's
often advised that students in science not go straight from college to
grad school; I think there's something to be said for not going to
college straight from high school, but making it a conscious choice. As
a non-traditional student myself, both in college and grad school, I
believe that knowing what I wanted to learn and why helped me appreciate
the opportunities I got (I've had a lot of good professors in my career,
and only a few dreadful ones. I don't think I'm exceptionally lucky,
just that I wanted to learn.) It's also helped when I've had to do some
of the "jumping through hoops" stuff that graduate school can entail-if
I know why I'm doing it and how it benefits me, I honestly think I can
do almost anything.
This sounds really elitist, and I don't mean it to be, but I think if
college was something people did because they wanted to learn, and not
because it was the next party after high school, student attitudes would
be differrent.
Given that this is not likely to happen anytime soon, maybe the best we
can hope for is that we awaken a desire to learn in some of the
students we deal with and at least give those who don't care a take-home
fact from the course. Sometimes that take-home fact is that one doesn't
excel just by showing up and if that's all some learn from your class,
IMHO , they've learned a lot.
*****************************************************
Julia Frugoli
Dartmouth College
visiting grad student at
Texas A&M University
Department of Biological Sciences
College Station, TX 77843
409-845-0663
FAX 409-847-8805
"Evil is best defined as militant ignorance."
Dr. M. Scott Peck*****************************************************
