I enjoyed this article about reinventing graduate-level education:
The problem:
Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost
The author’s vision to steal includes:
2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. [..] A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.
Have grad students come down from the ivory tower and pile onto the challenges of the day. Sounds like a plan!
Education is unquestionably a vital field, because everything in civilization is determined by education and learning. I saw that on a website someplace — a non-profit organization in the Philippines. Teachers strive at their craft (many of them, anyway). But there are some who seem to have a gift to inspire. My senior high school world history teacher was one of those. She had lived in China as a growing up. When she taught in Rockville, Maryland, you could feel the wisdom of all her experience. She didn’t have us memorize dates. Which was the first truly great thing I had been told by a history tutor. What she said next took the subject several magnitudes higher in value. She wanted us to know the motivations of history — the deeply visceral, human aspects of what can somewhat be a deadly dry subject. Jaime Escalante of “Stand and Deliver” fame, dared to dream big. Calculus for the typically dropout crowd? Pushing them to go on to college? Wow. And I’ve this book called, “Calculus Made Easy,” by Sylvanus P. Thompson, first published in 1910. It’s been through many printings all to make an easy subject simple. What are we able to do to create more tutors who inspire world-changing excellence? Einstein once asserted that imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge can provide you with the inspiration. Imagination will take you to the stars. Don’t our kids ought to get better?