Socrates Don't Work Here

As I tried to settle in to Good Friday's solemn, sad, but hopeful afternoon, I made the mistake of checking my email and just glanced at a higher education news flash that appeared in the viewing window. A couple of groups, one a community college organization, are announcing a partnership with somebody in Africa to strengthen curriculum and improve job prep, blah blah blah. Having worked in community colleges for the past nine years, I can only laugh at the same old jargon. How about we just teach some concepts, allow the students to prepare themselves to be thinking adults, and then let them find their way in the work force? The idea of an apprenticeship or on the job training is anathema to higher ed now. Think of all that revenue out the window, or off the bottom line. Expectations at the college level have fallen to such a low that we might as well admit that thousands of the students at the Associate Degree level are only glorified high school graduates--finally--after two years of remedial work. They now might be able to understand a conversation with or decipher a note from their counterparts--the high school grads back in the middle of the previous century. I am guessing that an eighth grade graduate of the century before that may have had similar knowledge. When did we decide to relinquish opening minds and preparing critical thinkers to history and instead just train in technology, and not do that all so well? There are some amazing thinkers out there in their early adulthood, and they may have been exposed to some rigorous college courses, but the watered down pabulum available to so many college students today or else the desperate efforts to make up for wasted high school days does not make for an educated work force. Education is learning about how to learn and how to live life. Work is about training. Today's education system is confused and driven by the bottom line and teachers who fear for their jobs if they dare to think out loud. What a shame.
And don't get me started on the nationalization of education.

New Broom Sweeps Clean

I am not ok with all of the moves we have undertaken during our marriage. Saying that makes me feel like I am somehow betraying my husband. I could have stopped any one of the twenty minor and major changes of address if I had chosen to not allow it. Consequences would have ensued, and then I could have dealt with that. But much of my adult life has been my allowing life to happen to me. There were a couple of exceptions, like going back to graduate school. Use of those graduate degrees has been thwarted and I have allowed that to happen as well. That cannot have been good modeling for my children. I know choosing not to be proactive has not been healthy for me. I am also keenly aware that I am a product of every place I have been, of all the accumulated circumstances. By extension, not turning down one of those roads would have meant different results in me. I have been told that I should be grateful for all of my history because it has made me what I am today. That axiom only works if I am happy with what I am today.