The old man and the C

For years--all the way from my California days--I have been arguing in favor of vocational education in high school and against pushing young people into college.  I have written many op-eds about these issues.

I have also written quite a few op-eds, and blogged over and over, that "higher education" is not vocational education.  While college does involve preparing for the world of employment, it is a lot more than mere job-training.

I have failed, and failed miserably at that, to get anywhere with such ideas.

But, I continue along this path anyway because, well, stupid is as stupid does! ;)

Now that we are well into the term, students have started feeling the pain of college and classes like mine.  "It's all downhill from here till the end of the term," remarked a student in class yesterday, when I asked them about the lack of energy in the room.

It is not me.  Even the best of the teachers face the same issue.  In this interview, the libertarian-economist, Bryan Caplan, quotes  "Steven Pinker, the psychologist at Harvard, who regularly wins awards for his teaching" and says:

Yet he looks at his classroom a couple of weeks into the semester and sees that half the students aren’t there. How can it be that these are the best students in the world, with the best teacher, at arguably the best school in the world, and half the students don’t think it’s worth their while? And they’re getting a grade, so they actually have an extra reason to be there, and yet they’re not. The only thing you can say is that even the best teacher in the world is boring to these kids, compared to what else they could be doing. It’s sad and hard to face, but that’s the truth.

Even at Harvard, many of the brightest students find one of the brightest thinkers/teachers to be boring!  What are my prospects then, right?

Caplan has a new book out, in which he tears into higher education.  He says in the interview:

People who don’t like school rarely write essays about how terrible it was. Instead they just suffer in silence or complain to their friends, and then they go and get a practical job and we never hear their voices again. The whole conversation about education is really driven by people who did enjoy school and who work with students. Part of what I wanted to do is give a voice to the voiceless and say, "They may not talk about it, but they are suffering." It’s not a real mystery if you actually go to a classroom and look at the faces. Students are generally not happy. They’re bored.

Yep, which is also why I have blogged in plenty about how the current system of higher education is nothing but a ponzi scheme run by educators.

I firmly believe that we are rapidly approaching the point of a paradigm shift in the way we do college.  There are forces converging from many directions.  When that shift happens, I will lose my job.  And students will not be subject to my boring classes either.