I agree with your idea theoretically, SW. Thoughts and ideas, if they are well supported, should be the most important factor in assessing a person's body of work.
Though MLA and other formats are and can be, for me personally and other academics and would-be academics, a giant hassle, and seemingly unimportant when compared to the hopefully new ideas contained in the paper one is writing. I guess this is where I can also look at the practical side of things, though. A typical academic journal might receive hundreds of submissions for one shot at publication. If I were the person reading these submissions, I would want them to be consistently formatted--not only for clarity's sake, but for ease in finding cited sources within the text and the full sources on a Works Consulted page. I wouldn't want to have to decipher which, if any, method of organization a particular person chose to use on a whim, or where they might have chosen to display sources. Also, I would not want to be the person on the other end that takes the contributor's work and tries to organize and make some sense of it for publication. It just seems to me that it's not unreasonable to have a standard, and to make each contributor responsible for putting their work into that standard format.
I do agree that in the workplace, there may be different ways of accomplishing the same thing effectively. And that maybe not each and every student will have a need for knowledge of MLA, APA, etc. But I think overall, there are far fewer exceptionally bright students that don't need training wheels, and far more students that have no concept of how to organize their thoughts in the first place. And those are probably the students that, even though it's a giant pain, need the structure of the rules and formatting the most.
My personal experience as a college comp teacher has reinforced this truth: that some students are naturals at forming original thoughts and ideas, finding adequate support, and organizing everything into an easily-understood, well-delineated argument, with little effort. Those are the students that are given a bit of slack--they know the rules well enough to break them for effect. But most students need to know what the rules are; they need the training wheels, else their writing is dang-near unreadable. Ideas are too simple, unsupported, unorganized. They often don't see the importance of even giving credit for another's thoughts and ideas. As much as I hate it, they almost beg for consequences. If they are given any slack whatsoever, they stop trying.
I would agree that most students, especially the undergraduates are altogether clueless with regard to how they should organize their thoughts; come up with ideas or for that matter, perform any academic task. The question with respect to why the case is such is an incredibly complex one and requires a whole another discussion, yet I conjecture that scholarly activity is deeply unnatural for most people. After all, only recently we have evolved from monkeys whose primary activities were concerned with non-cerebral, visceral tasks. It is not surprising that most students do not have an instinct that guides them to engage in quality abstract thought.
These people do indeed need to be supervised very carefully. Despite the fact that I accept all of your arguments, I do not see them as a source of sympathy for the contemporary educational system. University should be a place of learning only, not an institutional that philistines can attend so they can make more money or impress their friends and family. Whoever has no notion with regard to what critical and creative thought deserves to flunk out of college.
If we were to establish such an institution, how exactly would it survive in the ruthless, capitalistic business world? The students who have no notion with regard to what critical thought is are the ones that offer the money that renders the existence of the present-day universities possible, if they are to be expelled, we would surely go out of business. The only way we could resolve this problem is by stepping away from the current-free market system further (which is a big part of the problematic system that I discussed in my OP). There the government will offer grants to educators who will establish institutions of higher learning where only the genuine skill of critical thought will be taught. Those who have no notion of what it means to think can go to a different institution that is reserved for training with regard to practical crafts such as business for example.
In short, the real thinker will go to an institution that I propose should be created by virtue of the government funds and the rest of the students can attend the current universities where they can mindlessly follow the vapid instructions. This way we are not going to confuse genuine learning for mere regurgitation and will also create institutions where learning can indeed take place without significant hindrances.
I disagree with this conspiracy theory. I believe that politicians and businessmen designed our educational system because it was the most practical and easiest structure to implement.
It's easier to prove to the voting parents that their child is learning in school by showing them scores of standardized tests. How do you prove to the parents that their child improved their independent thinking and the school is bringing out the child's unique abilities?
How do you create a curriculum that encourage independent thinking?
What will the grading system be like? Wouldn't the grading be too subjective because there is no standard right and wrong?
Will there be a high chance that the teacher will force his/her type of thinking on to the students?
Overall I think it's nonsense to train children in schools to be a bunch of sheep. Most humans are naturally already sheeps!
For the most part, I agree with this. Most politicians and businessmen were concerned with being re-elected first and foremost. I doubt that they had the time or aptitude to ponder deep philosophical matters such as human dignity and what quality education truly is.
However, later on, they had an unconscious urge to suppress critical thought as they noticed that people who think for themselves and have dignity cause them problems. Would they go out of their way to keep an educational system in status quo? That is questionable. Would they make an effort to keep it that way? Certainly, in part because it seems practical to do so (as this gets them re-elected) and secondly because on an unconscious level, they genuinely appreciate the fact that the educational system produces chattel that they can exploit with a relative ease.
I don't agree with all this. I don't think the instructions are absurd, nor do I think they are prioritized over course objectives that are outlined on the syllabi or education in general.
Staying on topic is good. It makes it fair to the teacher. They have creative writing classes for creative types. You can also write whatever you please outside of class. But enrolling in a course is like signing a contract, and it should be no surprise you are expected to hold your end of the deal.
You make two claims.
1. I don't think instructions are absurd.
2. If you sign up for a class, you have the responsibility to follow instructions.
The two claims are unconnected. Do you mean to suggest that even if the instructions are absurd, because you signed up for the class, you have to follow them irrespectively of how ridiculous they may be.
That is another question that requires a whole new discussion. However, I don't think that this at all helps us to solve the problem of contemporary education.
To simply agree with the OP may indicate that I lack critical thinking skills. No?
Firstly, why do we observe "critical thinking" students exiting conventional educational programs if they are supposedly stripped of the ability to "critically think"? It would follow that either a) these students use their abilities to undo conventional modes of education, or b) your premise is completely untrue.
From my perspective, there are those who aspire toward critical thinking, and others who couldn't care less. This phenomena could very well be independent of the educational process.
One could say that the educational systems are simply tailored for the majority of students, who lacked "critical thinking" abilities in the first place. Thus, the effect has now become the cause.
There is no need to say that conventional education causes anything but convention education, which varies from state to state, location to vocation. Therefore, your argument that all of academia is one way or another just doesn't hold true.
It may be true that most people lack the ability and the incentive to think critically, yet the current system encourages them to continue avoiding critical thought. The current system may not be the cause of the problem, or it may not be the source of the thoughtlessness of the people as they are probably thoughtless by nature, but its certainly reinforcing these undesirable tendencies of theirs. For this reason I think that it is an evil that should be eradicated.
Mmm. To be honest, I haven't truly found this to be the case, with the exception of first-year undergraduate. A good number of professors, especially the older ones with more experience and wisdom, seem to love it when you give a perspective that is both correct and not-extremely-bookish. Younger ones less so, but you know why? Because the homeworks & exams aren't even graded by them, they're graded by their assistants.
However, salaries tend to be slightly flatter in Italy; only industrial families and politicians have a substantially higher salary (a CEO will probably get around 200'000 euros a year, not "millions" - and bonuses are mostly absent, so the salary is not strongly influenced by the success of the firm/bank - this is also why our banks didn't have a lot of problems during the 2008-2009 liquidity crisis); this probably lowers the incentives towards the attitude described by the OP.
The system of Western Europe does not practice the 'free-market' regime as much as the American one does. In Italy, I would conjecture, it is much more difficult for a CEO to rob enough people to make millions of dollars each yet than it is in the United States.
Though to be quite honest, I think it's much easier to teach someone to be conventional than it is to teach someone to be "creative". I can see the merit in trying to teach someone to think critically/creatively, but I don't know how that would be implemented in a practical sense especially with the years of indoctrination of teachers to think/teach in a specific, narrow manner. Moreover, there would be no "fair" means of grading and grade separation, because there is no objective criterion on which to grade "creativity" and "critical thinking". Also, critical thinking requires that we identify and attack underlying assumptions of theories..
I agree that implementing a curriculum that teaches students to be creative and critical is more difficult than implementing the current curriculum, however, it can be done.
Here are some preliminary thoughts.
Step 1. Assign a reading.
Step 2. Make sure that the student does the reading by forcing him or her to summarize it.
Step 3. Fail all students who do nothing but summarize or quote the text.
Step 4. Offer a passing grade only to students who have mentioned something that did not come directly for the text. (They could have done something as simple as merely asking if the author they read was correct and offering some reasons why he may or may not be correct. By doing this, on some level, the student displays creative and critical thinking.)
With all of that in consideration, implementing an academic agenda that evaluates the students' ability to think creatively and critically does not seem impossible.
If we did succeed in teaching students to do that in a general sense, the education system would descend into anarchy with students' complete deconstruction of established dogma (the curriculum). In which case, you have to wonder at what ends such an "education" would serve.
I do not think that you can make this inference without committing the slippery slope fallacy. Surely critical thinking is by its nature anti-establishment and a step towards developing critical thinking may bring students closer to a point where they would be inclined to reject everything they learned. However, making that one step towards that destination does not mean that we are going to go all the way there.
We can accept some principles as unquestionable (for example, that students have to make comments that are relevant to the agenda of the course), yet we can allow them to do well in the class without following the instructions point by point. In short, if we give critical thought free reign, we may destabilize education altogether. This certainly would be undesirable, however, I see no harm at all in simply giving our students a longer leash.
I guess that's the thing - an education system, in itself, is a paradox. On an idealistic level, education should be personal, driven by curiosity and the want to know more on a global scale and be fueled by discussion - that's what Plato's academy was founded on. On the other hand, it's a system. How can you systematise something that is so individualistic?
You need to strike a balance between granting the students an opportunity to be individualistic and assessing their progress in a systemic manner. When you have two methods that contradict one another, it does not mean that you must embrace one in entirety and reject the other altogether. You can incorporate elements of both into your system. In this case, the latter element is preponderant over the former. I suggest that the former should carry slightly greater weight, yet the latter should not be regarded as unimportant because if it is to be regarded as insignificant, the destabilization of academic curriculum that you have alluded to will happen.
Well, they completed these essays and turned them in to me. But part of my job requirement is not simply to grade them, but also to have the grades looked over and approved by the professor (of course, he doesn't have to read all 80 essays...he just has to look over some samples of each grade category that I bring to him to make sure I'm "properly" evaluating them). Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing this practice in and of itself, and I can certainly see the utility of it. You don't want some wacky TAs running around assigning arbitrary grades, or grading by "favorites."
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I don't understand why we must either follow arbitrary rules to a 'T' or have wacky TAs running around grading papers as they please. I see that on one end of the spectrum we have people who thoughtless grade based on the rules and on the other end people who have no structure behind their grading system and are guided by mere whims.
We don't need to be in one of those two camps. Why not grade the papers based strictly on insight and clarity of exposition. This does not at all seem whimsical or structureless. What insight and clarity of exposition mean can be clearly defined and in accordance to such definitions, a standard of evaluation can be established which shall be used to grade all submitted assignments.