A New Take on an Old Idea (Revised)

Are we really missing out on knowledge that our schools and institutions should be teaching us? The answer to this question is looked at closely in a recent Bloggingheads video involving William Deresiewicz, of Yale University, and Mark Edmundson, of the University of Virginia. In the section entitled, “Are there still room for big questions in college?” The two discuss the modern ways of the University and how a elite education might not necessarily be as great as it’s hyped up to be.

The video is set up with the screen divided in half with Deresiewicz on one side and Edmundson on the other. I found this quite interesting and fitting because when one made a statement we were able to see how the other reacted and what kind of facial expressions he made. This was fitting since these gentlemen though relatively close on the east coast are from different areas and could have different takes on some of the topics. Also, the video was part of a larger page that allowed the viewer to access some of the articles that these two men had written in regards to the topic at hand. I found this helpful in further clarifying the statements and ideas that they were discussing.

The article that seemed to be one of the central pieces to their discussion was Deresiewicz “ Disadvantage of an Elite Education”. This article was central to the idea that true teaching involves one on one time between students and their professors. I highly agreed with this statement because, being the type of person who learns better in an intimate environment, being thrown into a classroom with two hundred other students can be quite difficult to handle. This has actually been something that has played a part in my own life. The idea of one on one teaching sounds great on paper, but there is defiantly a huge amount of sacrifices that need to be made in order for one on one time to occur. Teachers would have to make time out of their already busy schedules to talk with students. It might be more fitting to make these one on one sessions rather small group meetings that way teachers can save time by talking to more students at once. With that said, some sort of system in which students can have a more personal relationship with their professors is essential to improving student learning.

Further the two men discuss this idea of leaders and thinkers of an institution. They came to the consensus that a leader buys in to all the ways of the school and its structure. Leaders are those who follow without question and are able to rise up to the top of their institution. While, thinkers are skeptics, they question everything and accept nothing. The idea of leaders and thinkers are at complete opposite sides of the spectrum, most college students fall somewhere in between the two. There are defiantly advantages and disadvantages to both. Leaders tend to be the more popular ones, who are involved with school activities and are liked by most. On the contrary, when a leader makes a mistake it becomes “blown up” because the leaders are supposed to set examples. Thinkers tend to be more highly educated, have the ability to “think outside the box”. The disadvantage of being a thinker comes from people’s view of them. They’re seen as outsiders, who are unsocial and have discontent with everything. The real question should be how far to the thinker/leader side are they? In my case I fall somewhere between completely neutral and a leader. I have a tendency to follow what I’m told and sometimes forget to stop and think, is this really right or am I just being oblivious to my own surroundings?

The idea that schools are trying to produce leaders rather than thinkers that way leaders can comeback and later invest in their institution and help the institution continue to modernize and grow, brings forth the idea that universities are simply industrial complexes. A school that aims to produce all leaders is like a car factory in that the cars are produced and produced and once they are sold the money is used to further establish the factory and improve tools and machinery. The university is like that car factory and the cars are the leaders who are produced that comeback later in life and donate to their alumni to keep the school moving along. This idea of a school being an industrial complex makes absolute sense when being looked at from the standpoint of the alumnus who donates back to their institution.

Lastly, a piece not mentioned in the video but, discussed in Deresiewicz’s article of how students at elite colleges are deprived of some of their innate freedoms can be seen from Deresiewicz’s observation at Yale. “I’ve been struck, during my time at Yale, by how similar everyone looks. You hardly see any hippies or punks or art-school types, and at a college that was known in the ’80s as the Gay Ivy, few out lesbians and no gender queers. The geeks don’t look all that geeky; the fashionable kids go in for understated elegance. Thirty-two flavors, all of them vanilla.” I found this highly interesting because modern society is the same way. They develop this idea to the public of what’s wrong and what’s right and the public is unwilling to go against the common ideals.

All in all the segment of the video makes one really think about their university and gives them a different perspective to look at rather than the one being shown to them everyday at school.