Academics

What does our modern American college system really teach our nation's youth? I have found myself pondering this question for a while now. Does our supposed academic process even support true academics anymore? This worries me.

When I look at modern schooling nowadays, I notice it merely encompasses the absorption of a staggering amount of facts, theories, formulas, and literature (of course depending on what subject material you are criticizing); the true analysis of ideas, discussion of pertinent information, and the overall process of real learning seems to have fallen by the wayside. I myself, a member of this system, am appalled by how robotic learning environments have become. I hear people criticize Eastern Powers overseas of exhibiting the same faults, but are we really any different? Where is this rich and colorful American "creativity" and ingenuity that I hear so much about nowadays? Was it ever there? It's not here now, at least.

One needs to look at the style of learning that plagues most classrooms nowadays: lecturing and supposed "discussion". Discussion, at least in my book, usually entails a somewhat equal sharing of ideas and information between two or more sources, in an ideally unbiased and intellectual setting. What I see in classrooms, is NOT discussion. Professors tend to merely spew forth torrents of information at these students, taking little feedback that contrasts with their academic viewpoints; is this a real way to learn? I don't know about others, but the mere presentation of facts and ideas does not constitute learning. You can throw as many buckets of water at a brick wall as you want, but none of that water is going to sustain the dying flower on the other side of that wall. If serious discussion could be actually had, with speech and thought actively encouraged, I'm sure we could turn that wall into a sponge, and that poor flower could soak in some of that sweet, life-giving water.

More on this later. For now, I must depart.

Keep your minds open,
Me