education crisis

Tuned-out students fuel university crisis: authors TheSpec.com - Local - Tuned-out students fuel university crisis: authors

Wade Hemsworth, The Hamilton Spectator, (Jan 12, 2008)

McMaster University proved to be friendly territory for the authors of a provocative book that warns of a crisis in Canadian universities.

Anton Allahar and James Cote, the authors of Ivory Tower Blues, received a warm reception from about 100 instructors and students yesterday.

They described a growing and widespread problem with students who work less but demand higher grades, administrations that deny the problem because they need tuition money to keep going and stressed-out professors caught in the middle.

No one spoke up to disagree.

The authors, both sociology professors at the University of Western Ontario, said university degrees and grades have lost meaning on increasingly commercialized campuses where number-crunchers refer to students as "basic income units" and students expect their tuitions alone to buy them the credentials they have been raised to think they need.

"The university has been in transition from an educational institution to a place of business," Allahar said.

"I used to have students, long ago. Today, I have customers, and in the language of our culture, the customer is always right."

When those customers demand higher grades, too often they get them, the authors said, and everyone gets hurt in the process.

Cote and Allahar said it's not all the students' fault. Parents, school teachers and society in general coddle children and teenagers in a misguided attempt to help them feel good about themselves.

"Everyone gets a gold star in this generation that's coming through," Cote said.

He described a mother who called a university administrator to ask if she could set up a cot in her son's residence room to help him with his transition to university living.

In the six months since their book was published, the authors said they have been cheered by colleagues across Canada but ignored or dismissed by administrators.

They said they are only saying out loud what others have whispered for a generation or more.

Without a universal return to common, honest and accurate standards for marks, the problem will only get worse, they said.

Meanwhile, the value of a university education is falling as stressed-out lecturers teach larger classes of tuned-out students, promoting a "gulp-and-vomit" approach to teaching and learning that favours multiple choice tests over essays and seminars, they said.

whemsworth@thespec.com

Radio Free School is settling in at the National Film Board of Canada's CITIZENSHIFT web - "Online media for social change" multi-media web site.

RFS's contribution helped start, and build, what the Citizenshift folks refer to as a dossier - a mix of media including text, audio, photos, art, and video - on the theme of UNSCHOOLING.

The Radio Free School group poured material in, the NFB workers post it, and now, you can go and check it out. It's got things like Kitty Corner artwork by (then) eight-year-old Bronwyn, a short story by(then) nine-year-old Madeleine, transcript of an interview with unschooling icon Wendy Priesnitz, a transcript of interviews on Children's Rights by (then) 11-year-old Evelyna, and four videos (produced with volunteer-labour at Dundas Independent Video Assoc. - DIVA).

The dossier is found (with more material being added) at citizen.nfb.ca/unschooling

We hope you enjoy it, and the other material from other producers.

Parallax Universe

THICH NHAT HANH
Book Reviews and Readings

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• The Hermit and the Well, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Illustrated by Vo-Dinh Mai, read by Evelyna Kay
• Meow said the mouse, by Beatrice Barbey, Illustrated by Philippe Ames, read by Bronwyn Kay
• Under The Rose Apple Tree by Thich Nhat Hanh, read by Beatrice Ekoko
• Each Breathe a Smile, based on teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh, Story by Sister Susan, Illustrated by Nguyen Thi Hop and Nguyen Dong, read by Bronwyn Kay
• Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go: Reflections on the Teachings of Zen Master Lin Chi by Thich Nhat Hanh, reviewed by Randy Kay
  

Music - Tuva: Voices From the Center of Asia

• Sigit With Igil [Bowed Instrument]
• Sigit With Khomuz
• Kozhamiktar (Antiphonal Quatrains)
  

tech (editing and production)

• Beatrice Ekoko
• Randy Kay
  

1) Incidental education, taking part in the on-going activities of society, must again be made the chief means of learning and teaching.
2) Most high schools should be eliminated, with other kinds of youth communities taking over their sociable functions.
3) College training should generally follow, rather than precede, entry into the professions
4) The Chief occupation of educators should be to see to it that the activities of society provide incidental education, rather than exploitation or neglect. If necessary, we must invent new useful activities that offer educational opportunities
5) The purpose of elementary pedagogy, through age twelve, should be to delay socialization, to protect children's free growth, since our families and community both pressure them too much and do not attend to them enough. Modern times pollute and waste natural human resources, the growing children, just as they do the land, air and water.

(Paul Goodman, 1971)