As I began to enter my reading notes from a book I read several years
ago (Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind) my mind
leapt to another subject—although not far from what Bloom’s book is
about: Costs of higher education. Somehow the rising costs of
higher education is connected to the notes I was taking from Bloom's
critique of US colleges, written almost a generation ago.
My Bloom reading notes will go into my database of notes. It’s a
collection of excerpts I’ve been saving for over 30 years – something
like parents who save for their children’s educations. In my mind,
there's a connection here, a clue to the mystery of why the cost of
education has become so great.
I started saving these notes when I was a college professor. They were
like a collection of baseball cards or stamps to me. Occasionally a
student borrowed them to read. Making reading notes was part of my daily
routine, what made me an expert in my field. I started note taking as a
study habit when I was in school and continues to the present time.
Something happened between the time (when I was working on farms in
the summers for tuition money during my college years) and the present. The costs of higher education are higher, so people are saving up
billions so they, or their children (or grandchildren) will have a better
chance of going to college. But there’s more to consider than higher
costs. Something to consider are the alternatives to the traditional path
to campus.
There are several new trends in higher education directly resulting from
new information and telecommunications technologies. One trend is the
growth of distance learning, which allows both students and teachers
greater flexibility in the way they teach and learn.
Another trend is the
use of databases on-line which gives people access to libraries of
information in text, image, sound and motion. We no longer must sacrifice
time and resources to get information. A third trend is the rise of private, for-profit learning companies.
The implicit assumption people make about going to college is that the
institutions harbor the best and brightest in their faculties and
facilities. You sign up for a college or take a course to be with a highly
qualified person in a subject area. According to the promoters of distance
learning and using new technologies, students all over the world will have
access to the greatest teachers, thanks to the Internet and similar
delivery venues.
That's why, when I look at my reading notes on 3 X 5 note cards of
Allan Bloom, I think about the students “out there” who, if they
studied with me, might find the contents of those cards useful to their
education. They're not like trading cards, but in this exchange they may find concepts in, for example, Bloom’s words
ones that out them in a better position, educationally.
They might become better workers, more creative or better at solving problems in
their lives and the lives of other people who come to them for help. They
might, in other words, be better educated.
All this because I wrote on this 3 X 5 card, years ago, and it will be on my
database of reading notes.
There’s more, because am at a stage in my
teaching career when I’m making my database for on-line delivery, and
Bloom provides me an insightful sentence connected with my work. Bloom
wrote, on page 271 in his book:
“… The theoretical experience is one of liberation, not only
negatively—freeing the thinker from fears of the Gods—but also
positively, simultaneously a discovery of the best ways of life.
Maimonides describes the experience of the philosophic use of reason as
follows: ‘This [theoretical experience] will then be a key permitting
one to enter places the gates to which were locked. And when these gates
are opened and these places are entered into, the souls will find rest
therein, the eyes will be delighted, and the bodies will be eased of their
toil and their labor.’”
Bloom’s subject (higher education in America) was a hot one at the
time. It was the late ‘80s, and education (public education in
particular) was under searing criticism. The United States was
losing ground in the international marketplace for new ideas and
productivity. Social structures were unraveling. To many people, it
appeared that education seemed to be the core of the problem. Bloom’s
was not the only widely-read criticism. Critiques were coming from many
other people, too.
Bloom probably was working on the first draft of his book the year I
resigned from teaching college. Though I was a college professor at the
time, I wasn’t concerned with the criticism. I had my own problems; in
fact, my main problem—keeping my teaching going in that desultory
environment—stemmed from my criticism of my colleagues and the way the
art school was being run. I had a vision of what college could be, and I
based it on the urgent need for early adoption of new information and
communications technologies.
I believe I was right, and my claim to the correct pathway dates to
Maimonides as Bloom presented his thought, in the quotation. My
“gates” opened with the simple act of using tools that are appropriate
to the task, on a scale appropriate to the subject of art of those times.
Video and, later, computers were the keys that unlocked the gates. I
adopted those “keys” and opened the gates to places I could enter (and
exit), and rest my soul. My toil and labor in art materials, supplies,
equipment (and the artifacts of that toil) were eased.
If this had not happened in the 1980s, as Bloom’s description bears
out, i.e., as America’s mind was closing, I might still be on the
campus—available to the incoming art students. Instead, America’s mind
did close; instead of opening Maimonides’ gates the slammed shut and I
was locked out.
I wonder, could we be witnessing the opening of America’s mind with
the advent of distance learning and on-line education? Can Bloom’s
“theoretical experience” free the thinker from fear of the Gods and
discover the best way of life? Is technology the key?
I must say yes, because I never stopped thinking like a professor. But
my labor and toil took a different turn. I grew less attached to the
materials and other tangibles of the artist’s pursuits and more enamored
of the viewing and manipulating of the image and ideas embodied in them.
Content became more important than the tangible or tactile, visual reality
of the work, for the robust representation of an artwork (not only its
visual appearance but also the technical process of making it and, if
available, the artist’s mental process it involved).
To me, this shift in preference signals a change in education at all
levels, and it might yet come from my efforts as an “ITinerate
professor”. My preferred level of teaching is with adults but I am aware
of the greater importance it has for children in their formative years.
The best investment I can make is not for college tuition for our
granddaughter, but in persuading people in the grandparent generation to
invest in new information and telecommunications technologies. By
investing, I don’t mean only in buying shares in Microsoft or Intel, but
in learning on their own what the benefits are of learning and teaching
with the new technologies.
And why not? Children are heavily invested in technology toys, so why
not invest in ourselves and our best knowledge in mediums that can be
built, stored, retrieved and disseminated at a low cost, high-yield rate?
And better yet, why not invest in toys for adults that help them teach and
learn, too? That’s what I’m doing—inventing a digital game-based
learning product for grown-ups.
So, if any part of this applies to you, or the next time you think
about saving for college, think about what college will look like in the
future. Ask, Will the college student (and this might be you if you’re
thinking about continuing education or starting over) have access to the
best and brightest the world has to offer? Also, think about who, how, and
if the intellectual properties of “the best and brightest” are being
formatted ways that they can be transmitted.
Imagine a trading card, or a stamp, that has hidden in it the
"best and brightest."
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Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. is an Itinerate Professor of Art in Seattle.
He taught 19 years at the UW as a professor of art, traditional
printmaking and media arts. Resigning at 43 to start his own learning,
research and production company, he created Emeralda in 1992, a game
strategy he likens to a fantasy region accessible only by computer. He
invented rules-of-play and an operating system he wants to be an online
interactive game. He’s immersed himself in a virtual promised land in
the age of digital reproduction.
He writes for the benefit of discipline, using a PDA when he's
wandering around and a desktop PC to organize his essays. He has a
thousand or more saved, which you can see listed on the ten
"islands" on the Web. An example is www.seanet.com/~ritchie/oszine.html,
on the island of O'Studios in the Emeralda Region.
For further information via e-mail: Ritchie@seanet.com,
and see the professional Web site at www.seanet.com/~ritchie.
The company’s name is Emeralda Works, 500 Aloha #105, Seattle, WA 98109.
Telephone (206) 285-0658. This article’s statistics are: 1361
Words. 6605
Characters. 3
Pages. ios30606
Saving for College. ©2003 Bill H Ritchie, Jr.
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