Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance
The most significant problem with education today is the problem of significance itself. Students – our most important critics – are struggling to find meaning and significance in their education. Last semester I invited my students to tell the world what they think of their education by helping me write a script for a video to be posted on YouTube. As part of the exercise, we created a survey measuring student involvement and engagement in various learning activities. On average, our survey sample of 131 students reported that they read less than half of the assigned readings, and further perceived only 26 percent of the readings to be relevant to their lives. Others noted that they often buy hundred dollar textbooks that they never open and pay for classes that they never attend. The video, “A Vision of Students Today” was viewed over one million times in its first month and was the most blogged about video in the blogosphere for several weeks, eliciting thousands of comments. With rare exception, educators around the world expressed the sad sense of profound identification with the scene.
| Attachment | Size |
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| WeschSignificance.pdf | 42.71 KB |
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