This power of vulnerability is made possible by making safe spaces for students so that they feel comfortable sharing.

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We are all role models whether we want to be or not. The question is if we are good role models for our students and what they take away with them. This ties into mentoring which many of the post have discussed this week.

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I believe that emotional EQ could be stated as empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathy is important in life, not only academia.

We are people, not thinking machines. I believe that the answer to many of your questions lie in worrying less about efficiency of knowledge passing, and more focus on the environment it is taught in and its intentions.

Well said.

I have a story, that while it did not take as much courage to find my own path as yours, I have left most of my education to chance.

I picked my discipline based on the flip of a coin. History or Architecture? It landed on architecture and about a decade later I am near finishing a doctorate in architecture. Near the end of my undergraduate career I flipped a coin again asking it if I should go to graduate school or not. It landed tails – graduate school here we come.

My research has simply been opportunities in things I found fun. Doors opened to these because I asked if I could, and should I. My teachers placed trust in me and allowed for the development of a personal curriculum in these graduate studies, of which many classes were actually not directly related to traditional architecture.

I do imagine what could happen if students could develop their own learning paths. I feel that this will come out of asking question to society such as how to feed a growing population, how to sustain quality of life, and where do we see our place in the world and how do I fit in it? Imagine a degree in water, in food, in whatever, derived from the questions a student has for many different disciplines. That I think is the future of our educational system.

I feel that it is less about being in touch with an artistic side, and more about being balanced in inquiry and resulting knowledge synthesis. You can drop out of school and study Zen Buddhism, but if you are not driven and inquisitive you will simply fall to the wayside.

It is the conviction to your set of ethics and ideals that define who you are as a person. Galileo’s was to them mind and its ability to observe and to stick by his knowldge of physical science. However there is a piece that is missing still: luck.

Luck is when prior preparation meets opportunity. Both of your examples prepared long and hard before becoming successful. This leaves us with cultivating the balanced approach to understanding and learning combining with the process of such inquiry.

This is interesting because architecture is a discipline devoted to the process of designing and the personal process you bring to the studio. If fact most of my research is devoted to assisting the development of this process in new students and understanding its development in older students.

Time moves forward without you, and in spite of you, not because you managed some project. To effectively manage time is actually to be intrinsically motivated rather than extrinsically — namely the deadline.

The disucssion that both of you bring up is exactly the point. Those who are intrinsically motivated (or simply have less on their plate) are more likely to finish early, and those who need that push will receive it in the form of the mandatory deadline.

Education is inherently: what we put in is what we get out. If the point is to meet deadlines are we missing the larger experience that is college? We have a unique opportunity that happens and then it is gone, why not enjoy it responsibly, or to the level that we desire? Education is not simply the time spent in class and in pursuit of assignments. It is the socialization and exposure to new ideas that broaden horizons and refines ideas and positions on life.

This means we trust students and we believe in the agency that we give them to choose to be timely or not, to be motivated by the topic or by the punishment derived by the system. We need to keep moving, but sprint when you have to.

People like to see numbers. If there is a hint of subjectivity, it is not seen as credible as compared to quantitative methods. That being said, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

This discussion brings the need for what will be ideas rather than disciplines that will begin to drive education in the future. I feel that many disciplines will come together to solve issues related to water, food, shelter, and quality of life, rather than using one discipline to solve issues.

To keep the motif of using your degree in the advent of a zombie apocalypse, you could write a mean technical manual on surviving an encounter.

I think things become the most meaningful when we have a personalized experience of the topic or the learning potential. Thanks for the stories.

There is a spectrum for everything. Thankfully, you have encountered many teachers who try their hardest to “bend” the rules of the system and not everyone has this opportunity. Depending this lack of enthusiasm from teachers might be from not knowing there is another option, simply keeping their heads down and having a job, or being burnt by the system. I personally do not have numbers of figures to support various claims and I suspect education has improved a least a little bit since Freire’s initial concerns. We can however use this as a reminder of what to avoid, even if we do not see it happening, and to remind others of the reasons for doing so.

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Did not expect this one to go down the path of understanding truth. If you all are interested in this sort of thing, read the philosophy of science a very short introduction by Okasha. This will introduce among many others Kant and his system of truth. A good example of history and different viewpoints is Newton and Goethe in regards to light, optics and color. Newton was scientific and Goethe was experiential. We really only study one in high school.