Problems in re-designing college

AVI posted a question: “I wonder what we would design for post-HS education these days if we were starting from scratch?"

This is a subset of a bigger question: how do we want to educate people?

There are some traps to trying to answer that one. When the animals wanted to appoint a king, the eagle said the criterion should be how high one can fly, the lion how loud one could roar, and so on—all with quite plausible explanations of the utility of the skill.

I thought back on our home school plans, and though I still think the outline was good, it wouldn’t fit everybody—in fact it didn’t.

For example, advertising and propaganda are so pervasive and skillful that I considered some lessons in persuasion techniques and elementary statistics (and the deceitful “average”) essential. The problem is that you need some analytical skill to parse out the tricks. Not a lot, but more than some people have. It is easier to use the rule of thumb that "all advertisers lie and all politicians lie and most newspapers lie about politics and social issues and whatever their advertisers don't like."

And not everybody is going to agree on the contents. Back in the day European nobility learned dancing, reading, some arithmetic, and fighting: Lots of practice with the fighting. They needed it. We’re lucky enough at this moment not to need quite so much fighting skill, but I’m not fool enough to think good luck lasts forever. Maybe other things are more immediately useful than my list.

We tried to make sure everybody knew some elementary carpentry, could repair their clothes (maybe even make them), accompany themselves on the piano, cook for themselves, drive, write a coherent paper, swim, factor a polynomial, know countries and geography, know the rudiments of another language… and a few other things as well. To my regret there was no ground swell of enthusiasm for differential calculus and marksmanship didn’t make the cut.

I like the idea of preparing people to teach themselves—or having readily available facilities ( Khan academy, book clubs, Sunday School, etc) for people to learn alone or in groups. (Some things you learn better in groups—discussion is critical.)

And I like the idea of breadth—getting a taste of a lot of different things. Who except lawyers, for example, graduates from college with any clue about the reasons behind property law, or who understands more than the vaguest outline of medicine? First aid, sure, but I’m not sure about any depth. And I wish philosophy were introduced earlier.

But at a minimum (to return to AVI’s question) the university should appreciate the differences in the nature of mastery of different subjects. A lot of courses of study don’t square off nicely in 4 year chunks.