Educating tomorrow...

The Two Books I read over the weekend made me think about the future we are creating.............

1. IN DEFENSE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION

By Fareed Zakaria

Liberal education is one of those ideas that many people support in theory but few can credibly define. Zakaria makes his case in part through autobiography, describing how he and his brother, helped by stellar SAT scores, eschewed the engineering- and test-centric culture of 1970s India to attend elite liberal arts universities in America. His deft and persuasive argument for the centrality of a rich curriculum in the sciences and humanities suggests he made a wise choice.

Zakaria brings the reader swiftly and surely through the noble history of the liberal education ideal and describes with alarm how it is buckling under pressure from rising college tuition and students who are understandably concerned about acquiring marketable skills. (Zakaria is on the board of my employer, the New America Foundation, but he has no involvement with my work.) He has little patience for “kids these days” arguments, concentrating instead on the many ways that diversity of knowledge, clarity of writing, creativity and depth of thinking are critical to both a good and a prosperous life.

The tension, however, between work-oriented learning and the liberal arts is not always as acute as Zakaria implies. Sometimes it makes sense to acquire valuable skills first and enrich your spirit in the security of employment. But his book is an accessible, necessary defence of an idea under siege.

And meanwhile Lani Guinier had this to say........

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2. THE TYRANNY OF THE MERITOCRACY

Democratizing Higher Education in America

By Lani Guinier

Guinier, a professor at Harvard Law School, became famous when her nomination to be assistant attorney general for civil rights was derailed by the raging culture wars of the early 1990s. Her book does not advocate the kind of mechanically redistributive race-based policies she was then accused (not always fairly) of promoting. Instead, she denounces the “testocracy,” in which students are sorted into elite colleges based on the narrow, individualistic measures assessed by the SAT. This, she argues, has the effect of both reinforcing inherited privilege and convincing the “testocratic” victors that their spoils are well deserved.

Most of this slim volume describes educators who have taken alternative approaches. Harvard University’s Eric Mazur has replaced traditional introductory physics lectures with a pedagogy of collaboration, nearly erasing gender gaps in science achievement. Scott Page of the University of Michigan has found that diverse groups are much better at solving problems than homogeneous groups of people with high test scores. The testocracy isn’t merely unjust; it’s educational malpractice.

Guinier might have pressed her colleagues at Harvard to explain why they continue to use the SAT, or explored why, despite the documented success of teachers like Mazur, most college professors haven’t changed their methods accordingly. But her book is admirably education-focused on a subject that is too often held hostage to ideological concerns.

Both the books have an awesome way to get the point home.

Education needs transformation to get to the future.