Re: Re: Re: Re: Teaching and reality


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Posted by Rick Denney on December 18, 2003 at 11:33:25:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Teaching and reality posted by Doug Whitten on December 18, 2003 at 09:14:57:

One problem is the notion that college professors have the responsibility of leading someone to a career. They certainly have the responsibility to make sure they know how to do certain things before giving them a passing grade, and they certainly have the responsibility to teach the things that they and their colleagues have agreed should be taught. But I'm not sure they should be teaching "a career".

Lots of kids study music when they know they won't be paid musicians. They will take their college degree and turn it into some other career that will pay them a decent living. I don't know of anyone with a college degree, who is willing to work, who can't make a decent life for themselves. That "willing to work" qualification is a big one, though. College students who think they are being taught to make money doing a particular thing are setting themselves up for disappointment, and sometimes use that disappointment as an excuse for NOT working. But it is the expectation that is false, not the education. For one thing, they likely have no clue as to what a job doing that thing is really like, and for another thing, there may be no market for it. Both of those are beyond the control of the professor, though wise professors will warn their students.

My boss is a trained mathemetician who does no math, and I have another colleague who is a trained physicist who does nearly no physics. Yet both do quite well, using the intelligence and learning skills that they honed in pursuing those areas of study. In my own case, 98% of what I need to know to do my job I learned after graduation, again using the study and learning skills obtained in college.

So, I have no problem with an excess of tuba students, as long as they know they will be transferring that experience to another line of work.

Rick "who has no illusions about higher education being the same as job training" Denney


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