The Real Conversation

A couple weeks ago, Obama came to campus and spoke about the importance of making higher education more affordable. He mentioned nothing about improving its quality. I wrote the following as a piece for Consider Magazine. 


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In his speech in Ann Arbor a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama stressed the importance of making higher education more accessible and affordable for more Americans. My qualms lie not in what he said, but in what he didn’t.

Making higher education more affordable is commendable—and a no-brainer. But the president made no mention of improving quality, a topic of much contention that merits equal attention.  In the last year, higher education has bore the scrutiny of many critics, ranging from wealthy entrepreneurs, such as Peter Thiel, to dissatisfied college graduates, such as Michael Ellsberg, to even college professors, such as Richard Arum.

Last year Peter Thiel caused quite a stir when, after predicting a bubble in higher education, he initiated a fellowship that granted 20 students under 20 years old $100,000 under the sole condition that they eschew college in favor of pursuing their own business venture. Author Michael Ellsberg echoed Thiel’s sentiments regarding a bubble in higher education, claiming that college doesn’t make people smarter—it just happens that smart people attend college. He compared it to the sport of basketball: tall people play basketball, but playing basketball doesn’t make you any taller. What college actually does, he says, is make you feel like you learned much, but, as many other people are trying to prove, you could have learned just as much — and saved a lot more money — in a non-university setting. Professor Arum, in his book Academically Adrift, also lamented the quality of higher education, citing self-executed studies that revealed a lack of student development during college in critical thinking and problem solving skills. Students, it seems, are leaving college with a degree and an expanded circle of friends, but little more.

These criticisms above are only a few of the gripes that comprise the current ideological climate in higher education today. If there is, in fact, a bubble, Obama addressed the first part—tuition costs are too expensive; but he didn’t address the second—college quality has not risen to match current prices.

We need to have a conversation about higher education, one that isn’t confined to whether students should attend college. Such a conversation should explore what learning means in a 21^st century economy, when, on average, students won’t work in the same field in which what they major, they’ll switch careers three times, and they’ll need to learn the habits and skills necessary for navigating an unpredictable future. Such a conversation will analyze what and how students should learn to prepare for such an economy, and how higher education can implement such preparation affordably—and effectively.

Students used to train for the unknown by developing analytical skills—we referred to this as learning how to think well. In today’s increasingly complex world, where we are constantly reinventing ourselves, we have to learn how to create our own opportunities, how to adapt to our surroundings—now it’s more like learning how to live well.

Obama could have achieved much during his visit by challenging Michigan students to become the future leaders our country so desperately needs right now. He could have provided us with a narrative for what we should aim to do here—develop valuable skill sets, the entrepreneurial mind set, an intellectual curiosity, and a strong moral compass—in addition to the usual narratives fed to us.

If I were Obama, I would have said something similar to the following: college grants you the opportunity to focus on exploring and experimenting, building relationships, and preparing yourself intellectually, physically, and emotionally for a fulfilling future. During these four years, you aren’t responsible for much other than your personal growth. This is the ultimate investment in your human capital. I would have reminded us that it’s not the end of the world if we don’t procure an internship this summer; that we’re defined by more than our major, our GPA, and our first job; that our growth occurs inside and outside the classroom, in textbooks and in great books, in our group projects and in our relationships.

Such a conversation can be nebulous, uncomfortable, and even threatening to some. Controlling costs is one thing, but improving education quality is something else entirely. Some people wouldn’t know where to start. Others have an interest in maintaining the status quo and avoiding the topic altogether. Others still are disgruntled and would rather reform from the outside. In the long run, though, improving our existing higher education institutions – making a long-term investment our human capital — may be one of the best investments we can make.

Therefore, before we can race to the top in higher education, we need to address where we are going and how we should train to get there—in other words, what and how we should learn to prosper in a 21^st-century economy and lifestyle.

More Than a Bullet Point

From my recent column in the New Student Union


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You are more than your GPA; you’re more than your test scores; and you’re more than your résumé. You have beliefs: convictions that guided your past decisions and shall guide your future ones. You’ve had experiences: work, travel, volunteer; you have a portfolio that demonstrates your talents and capabilities. And, above all, you have a story — how you became you, what you’ve done and where you want to go — that can’t be captured from a bullet point.

So, when prospective recruiters evaluate students solely on their bullet points, they aren’t performing due diligence.

A high GPA demonstrates that a student can perform any activity at a high level; they’ve likely mastered test-preparation, writing a stellar 5-paragraph essay and, generally, satisfying the evaluator. These are valuable skills, to be sure, but there are other valuable skills that aren’t manifested from a GPA. What about your character — grit? What about your initiative? In other words, can you pursue your own project and persevere without constant feedback? And then there are the intangibles; prospective recruiters should want to know how creative, fun and socially intelligent you are, no? Or how loyal, how respectful and how team-oriented you are, right? In the bullet-point model, though, such valuable information falls through the cracks. And although employers and colleges know this — that they covet skills undetectable on a GPA and résumé — their proposed remedy, the job interview, falls short; students still game the system by memorizing answers to often-asked questions. Such a contrived, short interaction fails to paint an adequate picture of a person.

This narrow emphasis on résumés, then, results in an inefficient market. The poor test takers — which are often the creative, entrepreneurial and super curious types — get shafted in the job search and college application processes.

So what? The problems above, some might say, are minor drawbacks when compared to the résumé’s strengths — namely, convenience and practicality. And an evaluation system, after all, is never perfect. So why should we care to improve it?

Here’s an even more important reason: Students tend to excessively concentrate on that in which they are evaluated, and, in today’s hyper competitive world, that’s true now more than ever. As a result, students focus almost exclusively on their GPA and résumé; and it’s well known that those two things aren’t always — or even regularly — synonymous with learning. Ideally, GPA would align with what’s best for students — that’s when teaching to the test works like a charm — but, unfortunately, too often it  just doesn’t.

Consider when students take easy classes to bolster their GPA; or when they solely care what’s on the test, even though they’ll forget it minutes afterwards. Or when they accept name brand internships, no matter what type of work they’ll do; or when they engage in extra curricular activities merely for the leadership recognition, even if they aren’t motivated or benefiting personally. Such a careerist approach prevents students from wandering, exploring and experimenting, which, if they don’t do now, between ages 18-22 — then when? Commitment is valuable, true and a good practice to develop, sure, but young adulthood is the time, especially in college, to experiment and discover which endeavors are worth committing to in the first place.

These endeavors end up shaping you. Your personal projects culminate in discovering your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes. In today’s world, the résumé gods — those who lack, curiosity, creativity, and personal conviction — will have neither the abilities nor the drive to solve our common problems — let alone their own. They will consistently chase approval until they receive it from everyone but themselves. Aim to get great grades, sure, but don’t do so at the expense of your own personal growth. Try to synchronize those objectives as much as possible.

Shifting how we evaluate students, however, is the job of educators. A recent article in GOOD Magazine, by Education Correspondent Liz Dwyer concurred, noting the importance of more holistic evaluations.

“Many educators are looking to take a more holistic approach to figuring out what students really know and can do. That often means using portfolios, a purposeful collection of a student’s best work, to assess the way students demonstrate proficiency in a subject.”

That means avenues that enable you to share your portfolio: your beliefs, your experiences, your skill-sets — in effect, your stories, will become increasingly more important.

This conversation is, in the end, not just about making the market more efficient. It’s about how we evaluate human worth and how we reshape the incentives to promote a more holistic type of development — one that can’t be captured in a bullet point. Undoubtedly, a résumé presents valuable, necessary information, but, on it’s own, it’s incomplete.

You are more than a bullet point — that is, of course, unless you only care about your bullet points.

Why, then, do we continue to evaluate talent by these statistics which only reward one type of learner and reveal only a fraction of who we are?

Because, I presume, it’s convenient. A standard number given by a standard test is to continue the easy way. This could be mere laziness, it could be practicality, it could be a bit of both; I couldn’t tell you. All I can say is that, for the reasons mentioned above, it’s worth contemplating a change.

There are a couple ways to approach this problem. One method is to acknowledge the limits of statistical evaluations — and eliminate the use of them entirely. We have a unique obsession with trying to “rank” everything, and, while it may work in sports when the objective is so clear cut (win the game), it won’t work as easily in schools because evaluating progress for education’s objectives — the students’ development — is more difficult, if not impossible, to measure. There are too many variables that come into play when developing “life-long learning.” As a result, evaluations should be conducted, not by measly numbers, but by seasoned veterans who instinctively know which attributes to look for.

The second option is to go in the opposite direction. Opponents of statistical evaluations claim that you can’t quantify a teacher’s love, or her effects over time, or the quality of a students’ character. Other schools, however, think differently. A piece in The New York Times Magazine references the Riverdale Country School, which incorporates “character” evaluations into a GPA. These included a combination of subjective descriptions and objective test-taking. At the least, they’re displaying the importance of character growth — so students are acting accordingly, and so it seems, that these habits will be ingrained.

This is not unlike what happened in baseball, as portrayed in Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball. The seasoned veterans made a plethora of poor judgments in evaluating players, but they didn’t trust the statistics. The problem, though, wasn’t the use of statistics; it was merely the poor use of statistics!

A nice middle ground could work — a combination of subjective and statistical evaluations — similar to what they’re doing in Riverdale. This is vastly important, because isn’t only about altering how we evaluate students. Indeed, it’s also about reincenvitizing students to strive for a holistic and humanistic education.

Column: Why I'm Making My Own Syllabus

This semester, I'll be writing columns for The New Student Union. Here's my first one:


***

I did it again: I just spent 5 days memorizing 50 esoteric concepts scattered over 500 note cards. Each day cramming for my Extreme Weather class cost me hundreds of dollars. Learning the intricacies of cumulonimbus clouds — and I’ve already forgotten them — over the course of the semester has cost me thousands.

Freed from the fetters, I sprint to the classic I’ve been yearning to read. Now that exams are over, I can actually learn something: I can read one of the greatest works ever written; I can spend a day with a mentor; I can work on a project with my friends. I hurry, suspecting that I only have a few days to learn before class starts.

Has it really come to this?

***

Last year, Peter Thiel hailed Higher Education as the third great bubble, and, putting his money where his mouth was, initiated a fellowship that granted 20 students under 20 years old $100,000 under the sole condition that they do not go to college. Students, he believes, would learn more from starting a business, pursuing their own learning plans and having access to successful mentors than from sitting in classes that constrain and stifle creativity.

The fellowship came after a large and growing litany of complaints against Higher Education. Some proponents, thinking practically, claim that students learn virtually zero real world skills, such as financial literacy, business basics or applying for jobs, within the realm of the university system. Others, thinking personally and holistically, claim that students aren’t encouraged to express or develop their creativity; they’re not reflecting or discovering what they believe in — and, instead, they spend much of their time jumping through hoops and regurgitating ancient and antiquated material.

In short, not only are students learning little about how to make a living, students aren't learning squat about  — they aren’t debating, experimenting or exploring — how to live a life worth living.

And, of course, there’s a hefty price tag involved, too, which, combined with the other factors, has caused many to re-think their educational paths. DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, a book by Anya Kamenetz, chronicles how worldwide, students are attempting to simulate structures such as a learning community, a skills portfolio and personalized syllabus that — once exclusive to university students — are now available to anyone with an Internet connection.

And yet, while it’s fun and empowering to forge one’s own learning path, people who attempt to do so quickly and forcefully realize that formal education provides three structural mechanisms without which learning becomes more difficult.

The first structure is community: It’s difficult to recreate the all-encompassing living and learning milieu that college provides. The second is feedback: Without a professor and grades, who do students have to keep them accountable — not only to monitor their work but also to evaluate their progress and offer recommendations for improvement? And the third is credibility: Perhaps the most valuable service that college offers is its universal stamp of approval — that is, a diploma — to the working world. This structure, too, can be simulated, but it requires remarkable talent and a proactive disposition.

The difficulty in recreating these three structures has prevented many top students from diving into personalized learning, no matter how attractive the future seems behind the present piles of note cards, problem sets and debt.

In other words, Higher Education may have substantial problems, but, for now, it’s the best we’ve got.

***

That’s how things look from my vantage point, at any rate. In terms of actual learning, I believe that college doesn’t need a major overhaul — it just needs some tweaking.

It could start with the social dynamics of the classroom, or lack thereof: In fact, I barely get a chance to develop relationships with my classmates or professors. I realized this after attending a Start Up Weekend, where, by speaking at length with experienced employers, and by spending two consecutive days on a complex project with my team, I learned more and developed more lasting relationships than I ever have in an entire semester-long course.

Another element that could be tweaked is the depth of subject matter. I will forget 90 percent of what I learn — which is OK, as alumni proudly tell us, because the life lessons will not come from what we learn, but in the work ethic required to ace our exams. (How intellectually comforting). If most of the information is irrelevant, why not shift the paradigm from “know-what” to “know-how”; why not, for example, instead of taking an accounting course, take a three day accounting retreat where you soak in its practical applications and actively simulate said practices in groups, developing friendships and mentorships in the process, rather than impersonally and inefficiently — in installments of one-and-a-half hours, two days a week — learning, or in some cases, memorizing, significantly more information than is useful?

The university structure is what it is, and change has always been slow-from the top-down. So I’m going rogue, within the context of a university community, and experimenting from the bottom-up.

I’m creating my own syllabus, equipped with reading lists, entrepreneurship projects, mentors, a board of advisors and a blog. I’ll be shadowing and interviewing and experimenting and reading and writing and, hopefully, learning much about myself and about the world along the way. And, in putting myself under the microscope, I’ll be putting Higher Education under the microscope, asking questions such as these: What should the future of Higher Education look like? What does it mean to prepare oneself for a 21st century economy and lifestyle? How can such preparation be taught — or learned, rather — effectively, affordably and in a manner that’s accessible to the masses?

The Future(?) of Education Pt II

In the future, we combine what's worked for centuries with what works today.

First, spiritual practice – or at least the practice of meditation – has been known to have calming and clarifying effects. Students begin the day with their own choice of practice.

Secondly, we’ve learned that we have an instinctive desire to master a skill or a topic that we find valuable. So, when students reach age 14 – and prior to that they acquire a well-rounded education in different academic subjects – they start Deliberate Practice training. Through this, they not only master a specific skill – and they can switch which skill they’re working on a couple times -- but they also develop habits of self-discipline and hard-work.

Thirdly, we’ve learned that the student-centered method is most effective. Student engagement requires student interest. And most adolescents aren’t going to be intrinsically interested by a grade -- they will be interested in the subject when it relates to their lives. While mentors//facilitators – formerly known as “teachers” -- help define the "map", students are at the drivers seat of their own education. They develop independent learning contracts for self-designed projects and find mentors to monitor their progress.

Fourthly, action-weekends have become increasingly successful. While some choose to spend a weekend on their own, others join events hosed by community members for educational and entertainment purposes.

Fifth, and lastly, we’ve come to realize how prominent the connection is between relationships and learning, and, in learning from the success of co-ops and military organizations, traditional schools have required that students learn and live in the same environment. 

Summers are spent traveling, or expanding upon their previous topics. 

In the future, we place much more importance in the cultivation of human capital -- and we have a much more holistic and nuanced view of it. 

The Future(?) Of Education

Sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, students meditate on a mat. It’s bright and early and there is a man clad in a robe who, though he’s leading the session, isn’t saying anything. In fact, not a word is spoken for over 30 minutes: the only audible sounds are the contemplative breaths – in…and out… -- of the students as they mentally, emotionally, and physically prepare for the day. One student focuses on God; another on her loved ones; and another on subduing his evolutionary drive to propagate genes with every female that crosses his mind (Good luck).

Relaxed, cleansed, and prepared, the students grab their breakfast. They’re encouraged to focus on their food, how delicious it is, how lucky they are to eat it. 

Shortly afterwards a gong echoes—It’s deliberate practice time. From 9-12 everyday, kids 14 and older enter the Pursuit of Mastery course, where they spend three hours developing, refining, mastering a skill set of their choice – mathematics, music, writing, art, science, etc – by developing the pattern recognitions that come with thousands of hours of smart work. If appropriate, they incorporate other academic subjects into their training.

Deliberate Practice is honored by a few words from the Headmaster, some music from volunteers, and a scrumptious meal (Imagine a feast straight out of Hogwarts).

Following a short rest, students have SDP (Self-Designed Projects). They select their project, their team, and their methodology accomplishing their project. They find mentors, either through their school, their community, or the internet. Although projects are open-ended, they’re rigorously monitored and progress is tracked weekly. Every few months – barring extenuating circumstances – students start a new project. By the time students graduate, they will have done the following: written a book/thesis, played on a sports team, started a business, traveled, worked with a charity, performed a stand up comedy routine, taken a public speaking course, and mastered a game or subject.

At 6 PM, students are done for the day and have the night for themselves. Perhaps they’d like to continue their projects, or engage in Dead Poets Society-esque activities, or do something else entirely.

Weekends consist of a variety of events, hosted by students, community members, or the school itself. Studies will have concluded that Start Up weekend type events – where you delve into specific subjects for long and consecutive periods of time (2 days straight) – are incredibly efficient, effective, and fun. Thus there will be two-day events that simulate starting a business, teaching a class, making a mini-film, working in congress, just to name a few, as well as the traditional camping, sports, and travel expeditions.

Welcome to the Future(?) of Education. 

Why "Teach A Man How To Fish" is Outdated

Excerpt from the New Cultures of Learning:

"Many educators, for example, consider the principle underlying the adage, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime,” to represent the height of educational practice today. Yet it is hardly cutting edge. It assumes that there will always be an endless supply of fish to catch and that the techniques for catching them will last a lifetime. And therein lies the major pitfall of the twenty-first century’s teaching model—namely, the belief that most of what we know will remain relatively unchanged for a long enough period of time to be worth the effort of transferring it. Certainly there are some ideas, facts, and concepts for which this holds true. But our contention is that the pool of unchanging resources is shrinking, and that the pond is providing us with fewer and fewer things that we can even identify as fish anymore."

Excerpt from DIY U:

"Well, now the world is changing too fast, and the need is growing too much, for institutions to keep up. Scientists say we have less than ten years to reinvent how we get energy, how we get around, and howe we make things if we don't want to collapse from the effects of global warming. And to do that, we as a species also have to find better ways of communicating, making decisions and understanding and weighing each other's needs. 

No one person knows how to do this; it requires a new synthesis of the wisdom of the ancients and cutting-edge discoveries. Our best hope is to get better at empowering individuals to find answers for themselves. In other words, "Forget about giving the guy a fish, or teaching him how to fish, either. Teach him how to teach himself, and he'll always be able to acquire the skills he needs to find food, skills you haven't even thought of yet for things you didn't know you could eat. 

Fishing itself, it happens, is a great example of this. Today, 90 percent of fish species are over-exploited. Fish farming is people’s fastest-growing source of food and will probably remain so until 2025, says James S. Diana of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The world needs people who can figure out new ways to repair the oceans and to find or grow renewable sources of food."

Inquiry-Based Education

The New Culture of Learning, a book written by Professor John Seely Brown, in distinguishing between two types of knowledge, explicit and tacit knowledge, claims that we have strayed away from tacit knowledge, and now, more than ever, we need to return to it. First off, let’s define the two types of knowledge: Think of explicit knowledge as “know-what” and tacit knowledge as “know-how”. Knowing the rules of chess, for instance, is explicit knowledge, whereas knowing how to play the game at high level involves tacit knowledge. Notice that tacit and explicit knowledge are interdependent: you can’t play the game well without knowing the rules, and, by the same token, it doesn’t do much good if you know the rules but cannot play well.

Tacit knowledge is becoming increasingly important, Seely notes, due to the increasing amount of data that we’re forced to make sense of. We need to be able to synthesize it quicker, evaluate what’s important and what isn’t, and have the ability to develop relationships as our minds become more and more preoccupied. Schools, though, have missed the memo: They almost exclusively focus on transmitting explicit knowledge — facts, definitions, the stuff of memorization. Seely continues: “In a stable world, focusing on explicit knowledge perhaps made more sense, but in a more rapidly changing world, tacit knowledge becomes increasingly central to our ability to thrive.“

Schools need a return to tacit knowledge – the proverbial street smarts, the intangibles, the stuff of building relationships and cultivating wisdom. But, as Seely notes, “tacit knowledge cannot be taught – it can only be learned,…only if the environment is designed to do that.” This, perhaps, explains the reluctance to embrace tacit learning. How can you teach something that can only be learned?

Let’s ask a better question: How can we design an environment that fosters tacit learning?

For one, Seely mentions, you can shift the emphasis from finding the right answers, indeed, to asking the right questions. This paradigm places student at the center of learning. Inquiry-based education inherently relates the subject material to one’s interests; it accustoms the student to ambiguity; It makes him more creative, interesting, and, above all, it encourages and develops his curiosity. This is key: Writer Jim Collins credits his core competence as curiosity. Charlie Rose frequently interviews people who say that curiosity is the skill that separated them from the pack. David Brooks wrote a column titled the “Question-Driven Life”, which says that curiosity is not the means of a good life but is the good life itself -- that is,while some chase $ or fame, others – like him, for example – chase profound and burning questions.

What does this look like in schools? Well, from how I see things, there are three approaches: There’s the community model, where you relate whatever it is you’re doing to community develop projects. My friend runs the Brightmoor program, which connects students’ class work with community projects in Brightmoor, Detroit. A group of writing students, for instance, wrote a storyboard cookbook for the elderly. A group of aspiring music teachers, to provide another example, will instruct inner-city youth in basic music theory. One could imagine all sorts of creative and fun ways that students studying business, engineering, and the humanities, to name a few, could incorporate their skills into community-service projects.

There’s the entrepreneurship model, where you take whatever it is your learning and try to turn a profit from it. This could be producing a painting, novel, CD, film, service, product, depending on your interests and skill sets, and the trying to sell it. This builds, even if you never make a dime, practical and tangible skills and, in a very real sense, shows you what it’s like to make a buck.

And then there’s the self-designed model where, based on what you’re learning, you design a project of choice. What might this look like? In economics, for instance, you may perform research on the financial crisis and then design a media campaign to popularize Keynesian economics. Or for history, you may want to make a skit, a musical – I’d make a rap musical – simulating the Tudors, or Watergate, or the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Or for sociology, you may want to make a video on why men and women can’t be friends, or why friends with benefits never works.

These examples are very consistent with what’s known as Problem-based learning, in which students learn material in the context of solving a larger question or dilemma. In history, for example, you pose the question: is war justified? And then analyze those wars with that question in mind. In Public Policy you ask: When is Government at its best, and in what fields does it fail? And analyze policy decisions from there.

Here’s why these methods work: First, students are actively engaged and actually care about what their work. Both student and teacher know there’s a purpose behind it and are thereby invested in it. Second, students learn readily applicable and transferable skills. Serving your community, earning a dollar, and choosing and following through on self-designed projects are not only valuable experiences in and of themselves, they also demonstrate and develop your creativity, your curiosity, and your initiative. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it’s fun. These are largely social activities, which enable relationships to flourish.

Altucher's Thoughts on Education

James Altucher, a book author who keeps a thoughtful, provocative, and profoundly honest blog, detailed 8 educational endeavors as alternatives to the traditional college path. These experiences include traveling the world, creating art, making people laugh, writing a book, working in charity, mastering a game, mastering a sport.


What's interesting about Altucher's piece is that it is less about college, indeed -- 

"Whenever I suggest “don’t send your kids to college” a lot of vey smart people invariably come back with the response, “well what else should they do.” And this amazes me. I guess its really hard to figure out what people of the ages 18-23 should do during the most vibrant, healthy years of their lives when they grow from being a child to an adult."

and more about what abilities an educated person should develop-- namely, 1) practical skills (making a living, mastering a game) 2) social experiences (playing sports, working in charity, starting a business) and 3) personal reflection (making art, writing a book).


Altucher's suggestions shouldn't merely be alternatives; they should be included in a holistic educational experience. Schools already offer some of them (e.g sports, art, charity). In the future, though, I'd like to see experiences such as writing a book, performing a stand up routine, starting a business, traveling the world, and mastering something rare and valuable, to name a few, as part of the normal educational experience, starting as early as high school. I'd wager that most adults would agree, in retrospect, that they would have enjoyed and gained much from undergoing these experiences during their adolescent years. 

Real Life University: The (Rough) Syllabus

Note: This is not "instead" of my University experience; This is a novel and, hopefully, rewarding experiment that I will undergo regardless of if I finish the 10 credits I need to graduate either this semester or during summer term.

***

We feel more accountable when we publicize our goals. With that in mind, I present a rough draft version of a syllabus, an intellectual exercise in and of itself. I will edit it as I experiment and tinker with the first theme, education, and as I consult friends and mentors.

Course Description: This is an experiment in self-education. I am personalizing my learning program to fit my goals – from what I want to learn & improve upon, to who I want to learn from and develop relationships with, and to how I learn best (which is by pursuing my own curiosities, solving interesting problems, and working with others).

What I want to improve in (i.e Subject Matter):

1. Become a better at and focus on my writing
1.  Sub goals: become a better speaker, conversationalist, and listener
2. Learn the ins and outs of the startup world on the job. 
3. Become more knowledgeable about education, philosophy, and wisdom broadly defined

How I will do this (i.e. Method):

Writing:

1. Write 1000 words a day towards columns and blog posts (no e-mails), six days a week
2. Audit John Rubadeau's writing course and collaborate with other writers.
3.  Read The Classics and a couple books on writing mechanics

Entrepreneurship: Work at a Start Up (truApp), interview and shadow entrepreneurs + VCs.

Knowledge: Having a different theme each month. These will include interviewing + shadowing + writing + discussing with people about these topics. 


I welcome all questions, feedback, and inquiries. Feel free to e-mail me at Erik.Torenberg@gmail.com. A big thank you for those who have already expressed their feedback and support.

This is what the Syllabus will look like (for now): 

The Hidden Curriculum

The Hidden Curriculum theory states that a large part of a student's education is learned inadvertently, that students, unconsciously and unwittingly, acquire many habits, practices, and dispositions in ways that had little to do with the curriculum design. 


It's important to evaluate one's education, then, by looking at much more than what's on the curriculum. An education is also defined by the effects the learning environment has on one's work ethic, vision of success, feelings of self-worth, and day-to-day habits. That's institutional design, incetive structures, and the cultural traditions we preserve and expand upon are so important.


KIPP schools, as Brooks notes in this column, have codified skills and habits that are typically developed involuntarily, those typically part of a hidden curriculum:

"In short, KIPP is taking skills that middle-class kids pick up unconsciously and it is rigorously drilling them into students from less fortunate backgrounds. KIPP Academies, like many of the best schools these days, don’t just cram information into brains. They educate the elephant. They surround students with a total environment, a holistic set of habits and messages, and they dominate students’ lives for many hours a day."

We used to think that the best way to foster hard-working, confident, and judicious students was to leave them be -- to let them grow "naturally". We, Brooks argues, were severely mistaken.

"A generation ago, the gods of education fashion ordained that children should be liberated from desks-in-a-row pedagogy to follow their “natural” inclinations. In those days, human beings were commonly divided between their natural selves, assumed to be free and wonderful, and their socially constructed selves, assumed to be inhibited and repressed.

"But now, thanks to bitter experience and scientific research, we know that the best environments don’t liberate students. We know, or have rediscovered, that the most nurturing environments are highly structured. Children flourish in homes that are organized, in families where attachments are stable, among people who plan for the future and within cultures that celebrate work."

Some Philosophies of Education

After doing some informal research, I've decided to make a Philosophy of Education mini-map to get myself started. These are vastly simplified (found on Wikipedia) and I will do more focused research on individual topics.

Essentially, the philosophies can be boiled down to purpose, subject matter, and method. In other words, the big questions these philosophies answer are 1) What's the point of education? 2) What's worth teaching? and 3) How do we teach it?

Purpose (What's the main goal of public education?):

1) Teach students skills for the economy.
2) Social Progress, broadly defined (e.g. Progressivism of Dewey, Critical Pedagogy of Freire).
3) Education is an end in and of itself.

Subject Matter (What's worth teaching?):


1) Perennialism -- Students should learn "what's lasting to people everywhere", principles not facts, and as humans first, and workers second.

2) Essentialism -- Students should learn academic subjects thoroughly, with an emphasis on skill development.

Though these two are not mutually exclusive, there is a large difference: While Essentialism has a vocational bent, Perennialism has more of a liberal arts focus.

Method (How should students learn the subject matter?):

1) Teacher-centered education -- This traditional approach is heavy on instruction, lecture, and test-taking. Championed throughout history by Aristotle, Mortimum Adler (Perennialism), and William Bagley (Essentialism), among others.

2) Student-centered education -- Curriculum grows out of students interests and learning styles. Subject matter must relate to students self-interest or else he will not care. Teacher serves a guide and facilitator.

1. Harkness method: Circle-style discussions of great books
2. Flip Education model: Students watch/read lectures at home (think Kahn Academy) and do homework during school time, with students as educators
3. Discovery method: Students pursue their own curiosities, typically in the form of projects. 
4. Problem-based learning: Material is presented as a problem to be solved, instead of mere facts. You learn about history by asking "Is War Justified?" and seeing the wars as case studies. You learn about economics by asking "Did the US make the right response to the conflict?" and then looking at Friedman and Keynes to give more context.
5. Unschooling: No grades. Create your own structure

Note: Progressivism seems to be a mix of Perennialism and Essentialism, but with a student-centered focus instead of a teacher-centered one. Much more research is left to be done, but Dewey's philosophy seems to be an early favorite.

RLU Theme of the Month: Education

The first month of my personalized syllabus (more info coming soon) will be Education themed.

While I've always taken an interest educating myself and others, I haven't informed myself about education on a broader scale. This month, then, I'll study education politics, economics, philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy. Here are the questions I'll ask:

K-12 & Higher Education Facts on the ground: What do the landscapes look like politically and economically? What are the current problems and attempts to solve them? What will the future of education look like?

Pedagogy, Philosophy, and Psychology: How do students learn? What are productive dynamics between teachers and students? What makes a great teacher, anyway, and how can that be quantified? What philosophies and considerations underpin different curriculum designs?

Personal education: What are my goals through my education? What's important to consider when designing my syllabus and learning environment? What are some tips for being an Autodidact within a larger learning community?

My studies will consist of the following:

-- Interviewing and shadowing local teachers, professors, and education thinkers.
-- Reading articles, papers, and books.
-- Writing reports, reflections, and comments other blogs

I have people in mind I will be intervewing, shadowing, and speaking with. If you have recommendations for things to read or people to talk too, pass them on. And, if you're interested in learning and participating in this informal study of education, let me know or post below in the comments section. (Note: This will be part of a larger, more concrete syllabus and, potentially, a learning collective).

DIY U

I just finished Anna Kamentz's book DIY U, about the future of education. A smart, quick read that will definitely relevant to my research. She had a really insightful piece in the NYT the other day. Below are my favorite quotes, emphases mine:

"I spend four years writing papers on Melvillle while my roomate is synthesizing proteins--what could our experiences possibly have in common that make us suitable for employment in middle management? There's no wide agreement on how to measure "liberal arts" or "critical thinking" or "decision making" or the other skills that college purports to teach."

"It's time to aggressively demystify the college degree and to say more loudly that four-year college is not for everyone: not in the name of limiting choice, but in the name of expanding it."

(On College Unbound): "His days are spent interning at a green architecture firm, his nights learning sign language , ballroom dancing, or discussing world issues with his seven roomates, and Saturday mornign taking a graduate level seminar. Monday and Friday mornings the eight college unbound students meet in an intensive seminar that crunches three general-ed requirements at a time into one, with lots of writing. "Most of the world sees intelligence as students memorizing facts that don't necessarily add practical application to their lives and regurgitating them later in life," Villagomez says. I believe intelligence is something much greater than that. It has alot more to do with adaptability."

"The way I see it, higher education, ten twenty years from now is going to look very different. It won't be the brick and mortar and the semseter and a course in this and a course in that. It's going to be more outcomes based and skill based, project based. You don't have to take these sixty courses or whatever it is to be a journalist. Someone will identify your gaps and then you address the gaps, in whatever way is possible. And that may mean taking an online course from New Zealand, being in a discussion forum with people in Canada, an internship in Mexico with Habitat for Humanity. You just need to get the knowledge and skills whatever way you can and then test out or present a portfolio. And when you add it up, a few years later, you actually are ready to be a good journalist."

"Forget about giving the guy a fish, or teaching him how to fish, either. Teach him how to teach himself, and he'll always be able to acquire the skills he needs to find food, skills you haven't even thought of yet for things you didn't know you could eat."

"The so called traditional path--graduating from high school at 18, going straight to college and living on campus, graduating at 22 and going straight into the workforce with a college-appropriate job--describes the experience of just 10% of people today."

"A complete personal learning plan ought to have four parts: finding a goal and the credentials or skills needed, formal study, experiential education, and building a personal learning network... In order to be succesfull in any educational program, the first subject you have to study is yourself. Treat it like any project: get a new notebook, a file folder, or if you have access to a computer, start a file labeled "About me" then start making a list or drawing a map for things that interest you or represent you."

1KV

Over the past couple of months a few friends and I have been working on 1000 Voices, a campaign to promote entrepreneurial education on campus.

Phase I is to targeted towards some of the most creative people on campus: LSA students. We want support for programs like eRes (an amazing, amazing opportunity). LSA students should have access and incentives to take entrepreneurship classes and engage in entrepreneurial projects. Regardless of major, whether their motive is profit, a desired social change, or both, students should apply what they learn in the classroom.

Here are the details of the petition. I wrote a column about it here. The Daily separately covered us here.

We're at 1000 voices and counting. We've heard positive support from students, faculty and alumni. Onwards.

Entrepreneurial Education

This really smart post by team-member Nancy Xiao gives a window into some of the stuff we're working on.

We're in the preliminary stages of undergoing a project to define and promote entrepreneurial education on campus, so I'll provide more information in the future.

Social Theory and Practice

"What the hell is that?" is the usual follow-up question when I tell them my other major. Social Theory and Practice offers some really interesting social science classes, blending sociology, economics, and philosophy and also grants the opportunity for a self-designed senior project/thesis.

Today I spoke to my advisor about my potential project. Here is the email I sent him:

" I would like to do my senior project in something involving education reform. Through examining a history of pedagogical thought, alternative educational models, and the cultural and economic byproducts of our current education system, I would like to take a stab of what the underlying paradigms in education—what students should learn and how should they learn it—could and should look like in the twenty first century. Education is an incredibly broad topic, and I expect to alter my path often as I begin the following research:

- The Schools our children deserve by Alfie Kohn

- Instead of Education by John Holt

- Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School by S.R Kahn.

- Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood by A.S. Neill

- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

- Compulsory Mis-Education, and the Community of Scholars by Paul Goodman

- Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

- The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch

- Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling by John Rury

- The Making of Americans: Democracy and our schools by E.D. Hirsch

- The End of Education by Neil Postman

- The Element by Ken Robinson (as well as all the research under the “The Learning Revolution” Facebook group created subsequent to his TED talk).

- A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

- The Race between Education and Technology by Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz.

- Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol"

I'm curious to hear if you have any book recommendations or thoughts for me. Let me know.