Dumb and Dumber? Or Condescending and Misguided?

[marct]

Hi Selil,

Marc, maybe what we need to do is write a paper on how the "industrial revoluton" era education better served the military establishment then the "enlightened Dr. Spock" form of education we have now.

May be worth looking at..... after I get other projects finished and you finish your course from the netherworld .

I don't know about your University but at ours the "stove pipes" of the specialiazation process is breaking down. Inter-disciplinary is the catch phrase now and working toward a balance between theory and practice. When I got my Masters Degree the university I was attending was "state of the practice", and now working on my PhD the phrase is "applied research".

It's similar up here, but if you look at the disciplinary stove pipes, they are actually getting reinforced as far as career paths are concerned. Basically, in order to get hired you have to be doing approved research (aka Kuhnian "normal science") and you only get to play in interdisciplinarity once you have tenure.

OTOH, the Institute I work out of is purely interdisciplinary and the program I teach in is the core of that (we have several other highly successful programs that are area focused). Hanging around and chatting is amazing - we have sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, computer scientists, cognitive science folks, human rights people, etc., etc. On the Third Hand, our Institute's director had to resign last month due to stress brought on, in part, by dealing with inter-unit politics .

My children though are being exposed to preliminary (primary) education that actually promotes concepts like "if they can't skip, then they can't read", and oh another goody "We don't care about accuracy they need to do math problems quickly" and feel good about it... I don't think the wave of education k-12 (with no child left behind laws) is going to serve the military.

This has been going on for too long now . I think my favorite analysis of it is here.

Credentialism is being fed by the fact the k-12 system is not doing it's job and you have to finish a students education. I'm not sure in higher education we're doing that well currently but I think it is getting better.

I think that there are some significant differences between higher ed in Canada and the US - outside of the fact you sent us many of your Marxists in the 60's and 70's . I'm not sure how that plays out in terms of perceptions about the military....

Marc