Educação universitária sem animo

EDUCATION

Pass, Fail

An inside look at the retail scam known as the modern university

BY RON SRIGLEY 
ILLUSTRATION BY LEIF PARSONS

For the past seven years, I’ve polled my students at the University of Prince Edward Island on two questions. First: If you were told today that a university education was no longer a requirement for high-quality employment, would you quit? Second: If you decided to stay, would you then switch programs?
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• The Kids are Alright Professors have always complained about classroom distractions. We need to teach to the students who care Compartilhar Salvar THEWALRUS.CA ·285 COMPARTILHAMENTOS
• Professors, You Were Not Normal - Daily Nous Professors, you were not normal. You weren’t normal back when you were an undergraduate, and you aren’t normal now. Even back then, you cared about stuff (yes I’ll say “stuff”) that most of your fellow students didn’t even ever think about, and now that you’ve spent so much time studying that stuff, writing about that stuff, credentializing yourself in that stuff, and attempting to stake out status in virtue of your command of that stuff, you care about it so much more. But still—just like back when you were a student—most people, including your students now, don’t care about that stuff. This is not new. So, please don’t write any opinion piece of the “declinist” variety—the kind that complains that things are worse than they used to be—that cites as an example of the phenomena that students just don’t care anymore. For what such an essay really tells us is how unhappy you are that the world has not changed. I bring this up now because making the rounds among academics on social media is “Pass, Fail: An inside look at the retail scam known as the modern university” by Ron Srigley, a professor of religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island. Srigley’s target isn’t just today’s student, but also the education system—college included—that makes them. Have a taste: the worst fate for our children, yours and mine, is yet to come. Because when the easy pleasures of youth run out and self-affirmation is all students have left, what will remain? Not just bad work and the dreary distractions of the modern entertainment industry—all of which can be tolerated, as bad as they may be—but the absence of something to live for, the highest and most beautiful activity of their intelligence. To cheat them of that is the real crime, and the most profound way in which modern universities have betrayed the trust of an entire generation of young people. The article touches on a variety of aspects of the modern university, and while there are some developments of legitimate concern, there is a lot in here that is declinist junk food. For a dozen instances, there’s… the description that matches some people of any era but is pitched as applying just to today’s kids: “Rather than learning freely and excelling, they’ve become.. Compartilhar Salvar DAILYNOUS.COM ·682 COMPARTILHAMENTOS
• Collegiality as Pedagogy: a Response to Ron Srigley Students can’t be the problem, unless they’ve always been the problem. And if they’ve always been the problem, perhaps we should reconsider the whole endeavor. It is for them, after all. But really, at some point, we need to stop blaming students for the state of education. If, after so many years of controlling student behavior, analyzing their data to understand and curtail that behavior, we are still unhappy with their performance, perhaps it’s time we turn education over to them. Perhaps it’s time we made them our colleagues. Compartilhar Salvar SEANMICHAELMORRIS.COM ·230 COMPARTILHAMENTOS