Sadly, not everyone. The extreme poor and the extremely discriminated can't access it. Otherwise, I concur with the OP.
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Is This the Best-Ever Era for Learning?
- Thread starter Debater Slayer
- Start date
It really depends.
Something I took for granted a bit before working more on the instructional side of higher education is the answer to this question: what is learning? What does it really mean to learn something? There have been different ideas about that throughout history, and even amongst professional educators. These differences in turn are reflected in course content and course design, regardless of course modality (e.g., online versus in-person).
A lot of students I work with struggle with what you are calling theoretical subjects precisely because they do not see the practical applications or the point of any of it. It feels disconnected from their reality and their lives. As a consequence, students fail to learn because they fail to think about the material and what it means to them and their lives. Bare, factual/theory knowledge is meaningless to most people. It's gotta be connected and related to something that matters. That's where practice comes in; things like apprenticeships, strong relationships with a student and mentor, things you do not get from a book or an internet page.
Honestly, there are a lot of complicated issues facing higher ed (and ed in general) right now that I could probably go on about at length. Kids are struggling. They're struggling for a lot of reasons, but some of it is that more doesn't necessarily mean better. These kids don't have the time, to engage with these things. Maybe I'd feel more comfortable calling this "the best era for learning" if students were really supported in the endeavor of higher education. They aren't. Not in this country. We do what we can, though.
Yazata
Active Member
It's certainly true that anyone with internet access has access to what a few decades ago would have been an extraordinarily good university library.
That's doubly true for those willing to ignore a few copyright laws. Virtually every academic title in print is available for download for free from various pirate sites.
There's Google Scholar and many other specialist sites (I like the U. of Pittsburgh's philosophy of science preprint server) for academic papers in all subjects.
But the thing is, students still have to read all that material. It takes work that most aren't willing to put in. And it's often necessary to have had some previous exposure to subjects so as to understand first-principles and to have the ability to chart a coherent course through all the complexities.
That's doubly true for those willing to ignore a few copyright laws. Virtually every academic title in print is available for download for free from various pirate sites.
There's Google Scholar and many other specialist sites (I like the U. of Pittsburgh's philosophy of science preprint server) for academic papers in all subjects.
But the thing is, students still have to read all that material. It takes work that most aren't willing to put in. And it's often necessary to have had some previous exposure to subjects so as to understand first-principles and to have the ability to chart a coherent course through all the complexities.
Yazata
Active Member
I've been thinking about this...
For most of history in most literate cultures, books were hand-written. Lots of time and effort went into it. So a full-length book was a treasure. Ancient or medieval libraries only possessed a small number of books by today's standards.
So what would happen is that students would study a single book far more intensively than anyone would study a book today. Oftentimes they memorized it word-for-word. (We still see this kind of memorization of "root texts" today in Tibetan monastic education.) Medieval European universities had low level faculty called "readers" who would read a text out loud, while students in the classroom hand-wrote out their own copies for themselves.
This kind of situation meant that educated people read far fewer books than educated people read today. But they were far better acquainted with the text than readers in today's day and age, when people often can hardly remember precisely what a book said right after they read it. Ancient and medieval scholarship was a narrow but deep kind of education.
Then in the 15th century the printing press was invented. Bookshops quickly appeared and individuals started having personal collections of books much larger than even the better ancient and medieval libraries. But many of the books on the shelves were never read or were read with far less care than earlier generations devoted to reading. Scholarship became broader but shallower.
Today books seem to be gradually disappearing in favor of much shorter pieces of text that will fit on a screen. One rarely sees people reading books any longer, a sight that used to be common. Everyone is staring at their cell-phone, and we can be certain that most of them aren't reading books on that tiny screen. Attention spans seem to be dramatically shinking as the broader but shallower theme continues and may be approaching its reductio-ad-absurdem. Where once a student memorized Aristotle's Categories word for word (or Vasubandhu's 30 Verses or whatever it was) today a few sentences seem to suffice in convincing readers that they have mastered the material.
To be frank, I'm not convinced that it's a wholesome development.
For most of history in most literate cultures, books were hand-written. Lots of time and effort went into it. So a full-length book was a treasure. Ancient or medieval libraries only possessed a small number of books by today's standards.
So what would happen is that students would study a single book far more intensively than anyone would study a book today. Oftentimes they memorized it word-for-word. (We still see this kind of memorization of "root texts" today in Tibetan monastic education.) Medieval European universities had low level faculty called "readers" who would read a text out loud, while students in the classroom hand-wrote out their own copies for themselves.
This kind of situation meant that educated people read far fewer books than educated people read today. But they were far better acquainted with the text than readers in today's day and age, when people often can hardly remember precisely what a book said right after they read it. Ancient and medieval scholarship was a narrow but deep kind of education.
Then in the 15th century the printing press was invented. Bookshops quickly appeared and individuals started having personal collections of books much larger than even the better ancient and medieval libraries. But many of the books on the shelves were never read or were read with far less care than earlier generations devoted to reading. Scholarship became broader but shallower.
Today books seem to be gradually disappearing in favor of much shorter pieces of text that will fit on a screen. One rarely sees people reading books any longer, a sight that used to be common. Everyone is staring at their cell-phone, and we can be certain that most of them aren't reading books on that tiny screen. Attention spans seem to be dramatically shinking as the broader but shallower theme continues and may be approaching its reductio-ad-absurdem. Where once a student memorized Aristotle's Categories word for word (or Vasubandhu's 30 Verses or whatever it was) today a few sentences seem to suffice in convincing readers that they have mastered the material.
To be frank, I'm not convinced that it's a wholesome development.
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