Beyond School

Shim, a senior in my AP Lit class, started a mini-debate with his post, “Students or Slaves?” Nicole linked and extended, then Jane disagreed, then Daniel jumped in with this

Think about it as Lego. If one wants to build something, the basic pieces are needed. Without the pieces, a building cannot be built. In our lives, education provides us with these rudimentary pieces.

I, as a student, want education to be supposedly “open-minded” and to facilitate creativity as well. But let’s face reality here. We’re ignorant. Before we become supposedly creative and all, we need to learn the rules before we play, just as in sports. We need to learn the laws of Newton to contribute to the scientific field, and we need to savor the works of past literary geniuses in order to become writers.

They’re still not, as a rule, boldly connecting to their (in six short months) adult peers in the blogosphere, but at least they’re connecting with each other. (Ah, the psychology of it all: identity as “student,” not as “young adult.” Self-willed self-walling. “Infantilization.”)

I want to add to the debate with this, from Forbes online (emphasis added):

If the success rate of directed research is very low, though, it is true that the more we search, the more likely we are to find things “by accident,” outside the original plan. Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research. What academia seems more masterful at is public relations and fundraising.

This is good news–for some. Ignore what you were told by your college economics professor and consider the following puzzle. Whenever you hear a snotty European presenting his stereotypes about Americans, he will often describe them as “unintellectual,” “uneducated,” and “poor in math,” because, unlike European schooling, American education is not based on equation drills and memorization.

Yet the person making these statements will likely be addicted to his iPod, wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans, and using Microsoft Word to jot down his “cultural” statements on his Intel-based PC, with some Google searches on the Internet here and there interrupting his composition. If old enough, he might also be using Viagra.

America’s primary export, it appears, is trial-and-error, and the innovative knowledge [I really like that label - CB] attained in such a way. Trial-and-error has error in it; and most top-down traditional rational and academic environments do not like the fallibility of “error” and the embarrassment of not quite knowing where they’re going. The U.S. fosters entrepreneurs and creators, not exam-takers, bureaucrats or, worse, deluded economists. So the perceived weakness of the American pupil in conventional studies is where his or her very strength may lie.

The American system of trial and error produces doers: Black Swan-hunting, dream-chasing entrepreneurs, with a tolerance for a certain class of risk-taking and for making plenty of small errors on the road to success or knowledge. This environment also attracts aggressive tinkering foreigners like this author.

Globalization allowed the U.S. to specialize in the creative aspect of things, the risk-taking production of concepts and ideas–that is, the scalable part of production, in which more income can be generated from the same fixed assets through innovation. By exporting jobs, the U.S. has outsourced the less scalable and more linear components of production, assigning them to the citizens of more mathematical and culturally rigid states, who are happy to be paid by the hour to work on other people’s ideas.

Sort of an aside, sort of related: I’m in my first year teaching senior AP Literature - an externally-assessed course, for-college-credit via timed multiple choice and essay exam brought to you by the creators of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) college entry exam. This is also my first year of teaching seniors, period. I am amazed at the stress, chaos, and lack of academic focus of seniors due to the demands of both the SAT and the College Application process - as well as the demands of too many AP courses strictly, it seems, for the purpose of having a more competitive transcript than the next college applicant.

The irony is, the creativity of the “Black Swan hunters” is the last thing that is rewarded on the SAT.

Are there any moves afoot to unseat the SAT as the arbiter of academic merit in our (American college-bound) young? Do other countries - Australia, New Zealand, the UK - have better forms of college-bound assessments?

[h/t to Stephen Downes' OLDaily for the link to this article.]

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