I just read the opinion piece, "College is a Waste of Time" by Dale Stephens. It's a fascinating take on higher education and has a lot of really valid points. In a lot of ways it flies in the face of how I was raised and the way I mapped my life, but it also speaks to many of the values that I hope to impart to my own boys.
Growing up, there was no question that I would go to college. Not because it was crammed down my throat, or because I was given no choice in the matter. It just was. My mother was the first of her family to go to college, and my father earned his degree as well. My mom was a high school counselor, and one of her many roles was to prepare kids for college, help them find the right place and get their applications in order. It never came up as a topic for discussion. I just knew, that for me, school would be 16 years (or more) and not 12.
Even as a kid I would pretend to be a college student. I would look for apartments in the paper and page through old catalogs that Mom would have around. OK, I totally admit that I was a strange child. But it was fanciful and exciting for me. The irony in it all, is that I did everything in my power to get through college as quickly as possible. I got focused on my career path by my senior year in high school. I knew I was going into the arts in some fashion, and by the end of my senior year, I knew I would be a graphic designer.
I chose a college, after dozens of campus tours, based on the breadth of classes and not the specialties. I decided I wanted to know more than color theory and perspective. Kind of like my oldest, I wanted "to know everything." I wanted to draw theories of my own and gain perspective on my expanding world. Some classes did that for me. Others did not. There was a direct correlation between the amount of time I spent on a class and the amount of problem solving and critical thinking involved in said class.
The graphic design curriculum was relatively new when I started school (the internet didn't even have pictures until half-way through my freshman year), and the small class size worked to my advantage. We were able to shape the class into what we wanted it to be. We began freelancing as a group by the time I was a sophomore, and one of my classmates even dropped out to start a very successful internet design company. And by the time I was a junior, after taking summer classes and studying in Europe, I had completed my requirements and was able to go to part-time status to work almost full-time at my internship.
Sometimes Brett, who is also a graphic designer, and I sit and talk about the classes we took in college. One stands out specifically, Art History. In Brett's art history classes, there were projects and discussions. In mine there was rote memorization. Don't get me wrong, I can memorize with the best of them, but what stuck with me from that class was not artistic movements and influential artists, but a dark room with a slide projector rhythmically flashing images onto the wall and an overwhelming feeling, of "how will this apply to my life?"
Now that I've added "mom" to my job title, I think a lot about my boys. (Obviously.) Brett and I talk continuously about college funds and such, and I wonder, is that where they will really end up? Is that what will be best for them? Is it bad if it's not? As my career has progressed, I have found myself more than once in meetings thinking, "how is it that you not only can't see the problem here, but also can not see the solution?" It seems so obvious to me.
And, after reading this piece on college, it seems even more clear. Stephens is right, we are often times not teaching our children how to think, but how to regurgitate. It is important to learn about the past, to understand the facts and know the parts and pieces of things. Those bits are integral to problem solving as well, but if we do not teach our children how to take that knowledge and create new things from it, where will we be? Will we be in a world of Hollywood Blockbuster-type living where every "great new thing" is just the reprocessing of a truly great new thing form 20+ years ago? I don't want to live in that world. I already saw that movie... the first time.
I want my children to imagine, create and push the boundaries of possibility. I want my kids to be able to say, "Yes, I know how it was done, but what if we did this?" And I want my kids to know that if college is not the place that will make that kind of thinking a reality for them, that's OK with me. And any college fund that may materialize in the next 18 years can be used for education – whether that education is in a classroom or on a train or the side of a mountain or even in their own basement is totally up to them. I want them to learn how to think. Period.
No comments:
Post a Comment