The Death of Education

Once upon a time in a land far away, there was a boy. Sure, there are boys right now, in a land close by, but there was nonetheless a boy, in a land far away, once upon a time. Every day this boy got up and went to school, at least, most of the time. Sometimes he may have looked a bit disheveled upon arrival, but that is besides the point. Everything was normal. He would go and listen to his teacher, read some dry textbooks, eat, and go to sleep too late. This went on for some time without exception.

Then one day his teacher announced, "Today we will divide up into groups to begin a group project." Once upon another time, this boy had encountered these so-called "group projects" and was not a fan. You see, twice or thrice upon other times (perhaps even tetrice or quintice), the boy had dealt with group projects and those notorious group members with whom we are all familiar. Free-loaders, slackers, pungent persons - they go by a variety of names. However, this group had no members of that type. After the first or second group meeting, the boy was sure this project would turn out better than most. Everyone had attended and seemed eager to help. Life was good.

For this particular assignment, the group was required to turn in a 25 page paper. This may seem a trivial project to those of you in lands nearby, but the boy knew better. In his land there was only one thing to study, and that was business. Everyone believed themselves profound utilitarians. Over the millenia, the arts and humanities, not to mention the sciences, had fallen to the wayside, deemed unproductive, money-sucking, utility-wasting ventures far below the lofty intellects of the citizenry. Unfortunately, the boy enjoyed money-sucking, utility-wasting activities like reading and did not even own a Q-square (very similar to what may be called an X-box in your land). But despite his misguided ventures, he had learned the value of being able to communicate in writing. And the boy knew that his group mates may not regard the skill of writing as important, potentially increasing the time necessary to edit the paper. Thus, he was sore afraid.

Well, each member had been assigned a five page portion of the paper and come time to gather them together, the boy was pleased to find that his fears were unnecessary. All of the partners had produced excellent work, even one of them who has from a land even farther away and did not speak the boy's language natively. "But wait, weren't there five of us?" the boy thought. There were indeed five of them, the others confirmed. One person was missing, and with the last member were the final 5 pages. Now the boy, and the other members, knew the group was flawed after all. No group project reach completion without a problem.

Already annoyed by the tardiness, the other members were further perturbed upon reading the paper, finally produced about a week later. Have you ever seen those funny translations from foreign languages into English? My favorite was a set of instructions to motorists in Tokyo reported by Bill Bryson in his book The Mother Tongue:

"When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor."

Sometimes they make even less sense. In any case, the final five pages were such that the boy and the other group members all thought the entirety had been copied from such a translation. The project, after all, concerned Mintendo, maker of the Q-square, who published most of its information in a foreign language. So the group did have some reason to doubt. Sentences like this were popping up all over the place:

"Everyone knows Mintendo for the icon colorful and full of mushrooms Nario games."

It just didn't seem normal, and everyone agreed, including the non-native speaker.

Perturbed but convinced, the boy and a friend confronted the member gone astray, for no one wanted to suffer the consequences of plagiarism. Sadly, after much discussion and many embarrassing moments, the boy and his friend were convinced that there had been no plagiarism. It was much worse. The member simply could not write intelligibly. The land far away had reached a new low. All those seemingly small budget cuts to literature and the arts had done their deathly deed. Now people might realize just how useful reading and writing truly were.

This experience was just the first of its nature for the boy. In the next few years he had innumerable group projects, and he was continually astonished to realize how unisolated were such occurrences. In truth, many future groups did not even have a majority of people who could construct full sentences on a regular basis. And, I forgot to mention, the boy was at an institution of higher learning, sometimes referred to as college. He left the institution deeply worried about the future of education.

Unfortunately, a strikingly similar, perhaps even completely parallel situation is occurring in our own land. Going through UGA, it was immediately apparent that most students hardly read for pleasure (or for school, to be honest). Especially in the business school, it was difficult to comprehend how some of the students had ever made it through 9th grade literature class, much less gotten into college. Obviously this does not describe everyone, and I had many friends who loved reading, including a few in business. But I nonetheless was left with the impression that many business students cared nothing for reading because they really cared nothing for learning, they merely wanted money.

I believe that a number of things are to blame for this sad state in our nation's colleges, but I will only address a few.

Politicians often refer to the importance of college as a way of improving the productive stock of the nation. Going to college, they say, prepares you for future work and makes you add more to the nation long-term. I only partially agree with that statement. First of all, that is not necessarily true for people who want to be mechanics. We should never forget that many fields simply require different training to be effective, and those individuals are no less important than PhDs. But more importantly, the super-focused approach of colleges these days often ends up hurting the students' ability to think and reason, in my opinion. Business students hardly study anything other than business. Physics students hardly study anything but physics and math. There is so little exposure to the arts and humanities in general that students often end up being completely one-sided. And if they do manage to retain reasoning abilities, they are often boring people with no appreciation for beauty and truth who believe their field to be far superior to all others. Many famous economists, I've noticed, are more than eager to mock the findings of other fields. You can often find them at Ivy League schools, patting themselves on the back while looking disdainfully towards the literature department. (Though I do know some economists who enjoy a good book). Well-roundedness has been abandoned for the cult of the specialist. But despite education trends, insightful knowledge does not restrict itself to one field. Therefore, I believe we are severely restricting our own productivity and learning.

The US also seems to have decided that math and science are more important than other fields, placing special emphasis on these subjects in elementary school through high school. But I feel it is equally important to study literature and writing. Communication of ideas is of extreme value. In fact, it may be of more importance than discoveries themselves. These days in academia, you have to convince your colleagues that your discovery or insight is not only valid but useful. If you are unable to do so, your discovery is doomed to live in dusty basements. You may have discovered a new theory of physics that would revolutionize the provision of energy, but if you cannot communicate its importance, it doesn't matter. And obviously, as my story (with actual quotations from an actual paper) shows, the ability to communicate, even among college students, is often absent.

Although these are just a few symptoms, I believe the underlying problem of improper priorities in education is massive. So maybe read some King Lear tonight, if you haven't in some time, and remind yourself just how excellent language can be. Although solutions may be hard to come by, they start with individual commitment to learning. Posterity will certainly have no reason to love learning if we tacitly convince them that close-mindedness, ignorance, and sloth are acceptable.

For further reading, check out these two articles:
Why We Educate our Children
College Illiterates