[ExI] education again

[Dave Sill]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 8:42 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> Suggestions please?


http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2016/06/its-time-to-ditch-4-years-of-costly.html

*Short, intense directed apprenticeships that teach students how to learn
on their own to mastery are the future of higher education.*
*So it turns out sitting in a chair for four years doesn't deliver mastery
in anything but the acquisition of staggering student-loan debt.* Practical
(i.e. useful) mastery requires not just hours of practice but *directed
deep learning via doing* of the sort you only get in an apprenticeship.
The failure of our model of largely passive learning and rote practice is
explained by Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code
<https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/055380684X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=055380684X&linkCode=as2&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkId=ad8754889b36441571eb3febb0f56a43>
(sent
to me by Ron G.), which upends the notion that talent is a genetic gift. It
isn't--in his words, it's grown by *deep practice*, the *ignition of
motivation* and *master coaching*.
*Using these techniques, student reach levels of accomplishment in months
that surpass those of students who spent years in hyper-costly conventional
education programs.* The potential to radically improve our higher
education system while reducing the cost of that education by 90% is the
topic of my books Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering
Economy
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1497533406/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1497533406&linkCode=as2&tag=charleshughsm-20>
 and The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in
Higher Education
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491222212/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1491222212&linkCode=as2&tag=charleshughsm-20>
.
*Let's start by admitting our system of higher education is unsustainable
and broken: a complete failure by any reasonable, objective standard.* Tuition
has soared $1,100% while the output of the system (the economic/educational
value of a college degree) has declined precipitously.
A recent major study, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College
Campuses
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LE9ILS/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B004LE9ILS&linkCode=as2&tag=charleshughsm-20>,
concluded that *"American higher education is characterized by limited or
no learning for a large proportion of students."*
'Academically Adrift': The News Gets Worse and Worse
<http://chronicle.com/article/Academically-Adrift-The/130743/> (The
Chronicle of Higher Education)
*These two charts are the acme of unsustainability: college tuition has
skyrocketed, along with federally funded student loan debt.*
*The typical graduate of a short, intense directed apprenticeship says "I
learned more in a month here than I did in four years of college."* This is
a statement of fact, and it is the result of the methods deployed in
structured on-the-job training.

It is a fact that passively listening to a lecture does not generate the
sort of mastery that creates economic value or the sort of deep
understanding that is the goal of a classic liberal arts education.
It's also a fact that rote practice also doesn't lead to mastery, and often
kills the very passion for a subject that in more productive programs
jumpstarts mastery.
*Our higher educational system has failed so badly that many students are
incapable of writing/communicating effectively.* In a world of rapidly
changing technologies across every field and an emerging economy that
places an ever-higher premium on collaboration and clear communication
across multiple time zones and languages, the ability to write clearly is
absolutely essential.
To "graduate" students with poor writing skills is completely unforgivable.
Yet in the current system, if a student logs the requisite number of
credits, a diploma is duly issued, regardless of how little he/she actually
learned.
*Here's a six-month program that could replace four years of hyper-costly,
ineffective university.*
1. Teach the students how to learn on their own, for the rest of their
lives. This could take as little as a few hours or days. Once a student
learns how to pursue deep learning and deep practice on their own, they
don't need years of classrooms--they just need the guidance of someone
experienced in the field, i.e. a structured apprenticeship.
2. One semester in a wide variety of on-the-job experiences. Once students
are given real experience in a variety of fields and industries, it's
likely some spark of ignition will occur and they'll find the motivation to
pursue real mastery instead of a worthless credential.
3. Directed apprenticeships plus online lectures/workshops by the best
lecturers viewed before or after the students' real work. The key to
learning deeply and learning fast is to push right up against the current
level of competence, where failure occurs and can be addressed one piece at
a time.
Interestingly, Coyle notes that the most successful incubators of talent
around the world are generally in makeshift or decrepit buildings, not
fancy new gleaming buildings of the sort that dot American college
campuses. Surrounded by luxury, who feels any hunger to learn anything
voraciously?
*The entire "campus experience" should be jettisoned, not just as an overly
expensive infrastructure but as a detriment to fast, deep learning that is
the foundation of mastery.*
It isn't that hard to teach students how to improve their
writing/communications skills very quickly, and give them a taste of the
classic liberal arts education so many people claim is the goal of $120,000
four-year programs that fail to generate a deep understanding of anything
remotely leading to mastery.
Give them a single sentence by Melville, Austin, et al. and have them
compose a sentence that is like the original in cadence, structure and
meaning in one minute flat. Go, go, go. Then break down each phrase and
each component and work through each one to improve their first efforts,
step by step. Repeat the process, always under intense time pressure.
Then take them out into the real world to report a journalistic story by
interviewing people, checking facts, confirming quotes from sources,
question the received wisdom around the topic and compose the story in
journalistic style. Once again, break down their efforts line by line in
comparison with a professional journalists' story on the same topic.
Then, in the second class... more doing the work at a breakneck pace, more
being pushed beyond their current level of expertise, more corrections of
errors and weaknesses, step by step, in a pressure-cooker of deadlines.
I can pretty much guarantee the students in such a directed apprenticeship
will learn more about writing in a week than they would in a year of
conventional coursework.
*Short, intense directed apprenticeships that teach students how to learn
on their own to mastery are the future of higher education*. We can
continue to squander trillions of dollars on an ineffective system until it
finally collapses under its own weight, or we can admit the current
contraption is unsustainable and a failure, and move on to a better,
cheaper system.

*A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for
All
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FYBYQZ4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B01FYBYQZ4&linkCode=as2&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkId=AXNFHTKZO2653EFV>
is
now available as an Audible audio book.*
*My new book is #2 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social
science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ELXQZGE/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B01ELXQZGE&linkCode=as2&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkId=33DAOPEVGBNGBS37>
($3.95
Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition)For more, please visit the book's website
<http://www.oftwominds.com/SQ-book.html>.*
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