Tuesday, June 09, 2009

More on fixing schools and colleges

So, it is open season on fixing the mess in higher education, and K-12. This was the latest NY Times op-ed in this topic.

I disagree with the op-ed author (Harold Levy) for a whole bunch of reasons:
  • I cannot believe that Levy would want to raise the age limit for compulsory education to 19. For better or worse, we already have 18 as the age when a kid becomes a legal adult. (of course, for alcohol they don't become adults until 21! that is another issue by itself.) The last thing I want to do is tell 18-year olds that they are not adults yet, and that we are going to tell them what they ought to do. To quite an extent, extending the compulsory education is almost the same as compulsory military service that a few countries have for their citizens. Compelling adults to do anything is not my idea of a free society.
  • I have already made my point in an op-ed that longer school year is not a panacea. There are a number of other issues with K-12 that need fixing. For instance, studies have shown that children need sleep, more so teenagers. Yet, by starting the school day at 8:00, and in some places as early as 7:00, we rudely interrupt their sleep and pack them off to school. I am yet to meet a teacher who does not complain how most students practically sleep through the first and second periods. We continue with this schedule because it fits the parents' work schedule. When I was a kid, our school started at 9:00 am!
  • Everybody talks about the long summer break, including Obama. I hate long summer breaks, which is one major reason why I teach summer school. It makes me less productive if I have that kind of a break. Which is also why I don't see myself taking a long sabbatical also. However, I do not want to force students into more schooling. I would rather lengthen the winter break by one more week, and have a longer spring time break, and thus shorten the summer break without adding more school days. Again, I think we won't do such things because it will interfere with the parents' work commitments.
    I tell you, we are screwing the kids because of what will be a good schedule for parents, and then we blame the kids for not doing well. Nice game we have going :-)
  • Levy's argument on truancy is the weakest of all his weak arguments. This way exceeds my threshold for how much society should take over parenting. I will leave it at that.
  • One of the groundwork laying items that Levy lists is "losing the advertising wars to for-profit colleges". And, what he in turn proposes is nothing but how public colleges and universities ought to behave like those for-profit colleges. Which means, Levy and I have a serious disagreement on the very purpose of higher education itself.
    When I criticize higher education, my concern is that we are promising students high economic rewards, but then screwing them up. I want full disclosure to students that there is no guarantee of productive employment upon graduation. I also want to emphasize to students that higher education is not about employment skills, but about something less tangible and more profound. Instead, we are currently playing a shell game of conveniently offering either of these explanations as bait and switch. When students worry about jobs, we tell them that higher ed is about more than jobs. But then we pummel them with how higher educated people on an average earn more. Of course, the world has conveniently raised the minimum education for even mindless routine jobs ....
  • Levy's comments on making accreditation is a waste. Because, hey, the entire accreditation process was a joke at our own university. It is a fantastic process if done correctly and I completely believe in self-study-based-accreditation. However, in its current structure most colleges and universities simply play the accreditation game, which is a shame. And, it cheats the public with whom we colleges and universities have a social contract.
If only I ruled the world :-)

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