There is a line in a book I am reading (The Road to Monticello) that reflects on how Thomas Jefferson chose an education over a college degree, and did not continue attending William and Mary.
William Deresiewicz reflect on a variation of that theme on how higher education is creating careers, not educated minds:
It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
True, there are a handful of my friends that I would attribute to being in the role of both common man and everyman. In a strange irony, most of them hail from either the University of Virginia or the United States military — two institutions upon which Thomas Jefferson had a great deal of influence in their formation (think USMA).
Yet for all of the people bearing diplomas, it is typically what they have done beyond their education that separates them from the pack.
Still, I look at my wife’s UVA diploma with a small degree of envy. While I attended Catholic University, I never graduated. While I read virtually every book I can lay a hand upon (ask Mrs. Kenney what she thinks about my library), one fact does bear reckoning — much of what I have learned in an impromptu education has had no course, no guidance, and no mentor.
That above all else is what is missing. Most every “great” in history can point back to an exceptional teacher who laid the foundations, someone who guided that pupil to greatness.
Perhaps in the end that is the secret… a self-motivated learner and an exceptional teacher to guide the student. I suspect that exceptional teachers can do more to help create the former, though I doubt that the current American education system at any level provides for this.
How many professionals would love to teach, but refuse because they can make more in the professional sector? Similarly, how many career-oriented college grads are trained specifically in pedagogy (i.e. an education major)? Worse still, is it serving anyone at any level — teachers, students, administrators, or the school system?
No quick fixes. Just raising questions.