the crisis of education
holy shit.
i'm trying to sign up for classes.
it's my senoir year at UCLA.
AND THERE IS NOTHING I WANT TO TAKE.
This is serious.
Outside of my my department (Design|Media Arts) there is nothing i want to learn from this institution. EVERYTHING ACADEMIC SEEMS COMPLETELY IRRELEVENT TO MY LIFE.
What must be understood, however, is that once i knew of two christmas mornings, one was the 25th, and the other, that fateful morning each quarter when the schedule of classes was revealed. In the beginning, I refused to obey any kind of general education obligations, i was interested my own educational agenda, which lead me to classes like Artificial Intelligence and Music with the famous David Cope, American Film Violence, Social Information Spaces, Visual Culture and Technology.
And things were great for a while.
But something has changed.
I've just realized, with stinging clarity, how much i've lost interest in institutionalized learning. I've found a great deal of academic writing to be forced and rigid, and I've often felt like a complete idiot for not being able to see beyond the cockamamy lingo often espoused by the highly educated. But now, more than ever, I feel the weight of centuries old baggage that this institution is carrying, and worse still, that this baggage is the only thing this system of learning is propping itself up on. Do we all have to keep repeating the culturally exhausted theories of a handfull of centuries old theorists? These ideas should certainly not be forgotten, but I don't see many professors pushing people to come up with their own theories, or even asking whether anyone has any to begin with.
This is precisely the problem.
Academia, as I've experienced it, gives no creedance to the intelligence of the student. The student is there to learn from the great masters, to humble himself to the wisdom of the ages. I believe in the wisdom of the ages, but I also believe in thinking freely about the world from ones own experiences. FURTHERMORE, Information is no longer locked in vaults, it's free, and this has to begin to play a serious role in the institutions of learning...or i'm dropping out.
i'm trying to sign up for classes.
it's my senoir year at UCLA.
AND THERE IS NOTHING I WANT TO TAKE.
This is serious.
Outside of my my department (Design|Media Arts) there is nothing i want to learn from this institution. EVERYTHING ACADEMIC SEEMS COMPLETELY IRRELEVENT TO MY LIFE.
What must be understood, however, is that once i knew of two christmas mornings, one was the 25th, and the other, that fateful morning each quarter when the schedule of classes was revealed. In the beginning, I refused to obey any kind of general education obligations, i was interested my own educational agenda, which lead me to classes like Artificial Intelligence and Music with the famous David Cope, American Film Violence, Social Information Spaces, Visual Culture and Technology.
And things were great for a while.
But something has changed.
I've just realized, with stinging clarity, how much i've lost interest in institutionalized learning. I've found a great deal of academic writing to be forced and rigid, and I've often felt like a complete idiot for not being able to see beyond the cockamamy lingo often espoused by the highly educated. But now, more than ever, I feel the weight of centuries old baggage that this institution is carrying, and worse still, that this baggage is the only thing this system of learning is propping itself up on. Do we all have to keep repeating the culturally exhausted theories of a handfull of centuries old theorists? These ideas should certainly not be forgotten, but I don't see many professors pushing people to come up with their own theories, or even asking whether anyone has any to begin with.
This is precisely the problem.
Academia, as I've experienced it, gives no creedance to the intelligence of the student. The student is there to learn from the great masters, to humble himself to the wisdom of the ages. I believe in the wisdom of the ages, but I also believe in thinking freely about the world from ones own experiences. FURTHERMORE, Information is no longer locked in vaults, it's free, and this has to begin to play a serious role in the institutions of learning...or i'm dropping out.
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