A Changing View of Education

As soon as I got home from Madrid, I enrolled myself in  Introduction to Macroeconomics at American University.  A few  observations:

·      The Internet is changing the way that young people learn.

OK. Insert sarcastic “wow, you’re so perceptive” joke here.  Are you done yet? 

Let me explain.  I once heard computers and, most importantly, the Internet, described as an “imagination machine.”  I was at an education conference that focused on technology in the classroom.  The leader of this lecture, a teacher, couldn’t have been more eloquent in describing the potential of arming each and every kid with a laptop.  The internet creates, he argued, a democratic classroom, where the student often has more access to information than does the teacher, where everyone can learn from everyone, where hard questions can be answered in seconds.  “You want your class to build robots?,” the presenter asked, “well that’s only a Google search away.”  I left the conference wondering how I could justify building robots in my Spanish class.

My experience in Macroeconomics, however, provided a far different interpretation of this “imagination machine.”  Many students had ditched their notebooks and pencils and transitioned to note taking on the computer.  They brought their computers to class—I assume that students at AU are not the only ones in the country now doing this—but they were not looking up the GDP of Guatemala or the comparative advantages of growing coffee in Vietnam.  Rather, they were on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and whatever the new thing is that has popped up since I left the country.  The computer in the classroom was not the gateway to wisdom that the teacher at the conference explained; instead, it was sucking the imagination out of the classroom, one gamma ray at a time.

·      Education: both a birthright and a privilege

I’ve started some informal English classes.  The plan was to start next week, and I would lead classes alongside the other volunteer, Ria Shroff, who is the head of the library here.   But many of the community members—and most of them Haitians—wouldn’t allow me to wait.  They demanded that I go down to the library with them and begin classes.  That very day.  Right now.  How could I possibly have said no?

Half way through a lesson, a young, Haitian man entered the room.  He wanted to learn, he said, not in an informal way, with attendance optional and no expectations set out, but instead with everything structured, with tests, quizzes, and exams.  The grade didn’t matter; he just wanted to learn as much as he could in the best possible way.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing for two reasons: 1) this young man, Ramón, incredibly bright, literate, fluent in Creole, French, Spanish, and with a solid command of English, didn’t have more than an 8^th grade education and 2) where I come from and from what I saw in AU (and I think that it was the same at Middlebury), most of the students (including me) did the most we could to find the easy way out.  It was like how health insurance companies dedicate along the lines of 1/3 of their expenses to not paying health claims.  Where they fight tooth and nail to pay the least they can, we fought, and hard, to work as little as possible.

·      An “A” is a “B” and a “B” is a “C”: A birthright and a privilege, continued

I did, of course, ace my Econ class, but my lack of effort should have knocked me down more than few points.  I didn’t recognize that, although I firmly believe that education is a birthright, it is also a privilege. 

Maybe the worst part is that, my attitude and those of my classmates had seeped into the system.  Our teacher, a wonderful, kind, highly intelligent former economic advisor at the Fed, must have known that her students were not putting in their all.  She must have seen vacant stares and furious typing and concluded that students, physically in their seats, mentally had left the building.  Instead of increasing the difficulty of the class, however, or even calling them out, she made the class easier, catering to these students.  While my transcript will now include that AU “A” on it (it actually most definitely won’t) I didn’t perform at that elite level either, and anyone could have told you that.  Especially Ramón.