Overall, college education seems a matter of mastering a complex body of knowledge for a very short time only to rather soon forget everything
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Why Do I Teach? - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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I’ve concluded that the goal of most college courses should not be knowledge but engaging in certain intellectual exercises.
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We should judge teaching not by the amount of knowledge it passes on, but by the enduring excitement it generates. Knowledge, when it comes, is a later arrival, flaring up, when the time is right, from the sparks good teachers have implanted in their students’ souls.
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A nice little essay by a university professor about what he sees as the goals of teaching.
Is The SAT Creating A Generation Of Bad Writers? : NPR - 0 views
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Because when you're writing in only 25 minutes, you don't have time to develop a clear, complex idea. You don't have time to think about an audience. It makes students think of writing in the most simplistic, reductive ways. It emphasizes length of writing. It emphasizes use big words and be sure to follow a very simple formula.
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if you are hired as a scorer, what you have to be able to do is to read 20 essays in an hour, which is three minutes per essay. And if you are trying to earn extra money, you get a bonus if you can read 30.
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Yikes!
What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking & Sacred Space :: Articles :... - 5 views
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This article reminds me of Issac Asimov's famous essay about the Eureka Phenomenon. Check it out: http://newviewoptions.com/The-Eureka-Phenomenon-by-Isaac-Asimov.pdf -
Thanks, Troy. I hadn't read it before. I was always doubtful of Eureka moments but classifying them as unnoticed thinking makes sense to me.
A history of the modern fact - 2 views
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Interesting discussion about the evolution of the concept of a fact. I think we all probably claim the authority of a 'fact' sometimes, so it's relevant to understand how they are changing. The psychology behind wanting to believe facts is fascinating.
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This has some interesting perspectives, but it does little to address belief. The people interviewed seem frustrated by belief, so they take a negative stance. I would like to know more about the experiment where participants had a more open-minded response to climate change after writing an essay about a time they fought for something they believe in. In that case, belief played a constructive role because of their lateral entry. There is a greater thinking level to this issue.
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Another interesting avenue my mind took while reading this was toward Owen Barfield's early 20th century investigation of history in English words. He shows how thinking develops through language. It is a good read if you can get past some of the antiquated language he uses to categorize his thoughts. It is titled, History in English Words. I have a copy if anyone wants to check it out.
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