I think the final assignment sounds awesome! If it’s any comfort, I will confess that I have encountered similar levels of resistance when I’ve proposed projects that involve creativity and integrative work across different domains. Usually I can get them over it (have to start small and build up to the main project), but it can be a struggle. I think that many college students have had little experience or support for the idea that their authentic, original ideas and creativity are valuable. Part of the resistance (I think) comes from lack of experience and being uncomfortable about risking something, but there’s also the effect of a lifetime of “learning” being framed largely in terms of “skills,” “standards,” “outcomes” and testing.

I’ m just glad you won’t be stealing anyone else’s dreams! (And yes, to Arash’s comment about obedience being the scourge of innovation.)

Wow. Thanks for this, Ernesto. I wonder how things have changed in the last few years, as physicians have come under increasing pressure to prescribe fewer opioid painkillers and reframe their perceptions of acceptable pain / discomfort?

What a great example of why context and culture matter. Thank you for sharing this, Neda!

Oh, I really like the idea of the flipped question! I’d take this a step further and say that the crisis is far more serious than scientists’ failure to communicate to non-scientists. Humanities scholars get the same critique as well — it’s just cloaked a bit differently. We’re accused of elitism and being “out of touch,” “parasitical,” or “irrelevant,” when our research is too complex for the average person to understand. Communicating clearly to different kinds of audiences is important for everyone in the academy. But one very unfortunate effect of the current perceptual landscape is that these critiques (of scholarship in general) have bolstered and validated the sense that it’s ok to be uninformed, or to reject anything you don’t understand. We’re losing the expectation that learning, sophistication, and elegance require effort and that the effort is worth it (and expected). But I digress!!!!
The point I really wanted to make, was that to my mind, the real crisis in communication and calling in the last 20-30 years involved the dissolution of an integrated vision of what the liberal arts are. We now equate “liberal arts” with “not math and science,” when in fact the “liberal arts” (id’d as such because they were deemed essential for successful participation in civic life), included literature, philosophy, math, and the social and physical sciences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education). I think we’ve blown it by separating out “science” as a domain that is supposedly distinct from other ways of understanding the world.
Wow. That was a long comment. Wonderful post, Arash!

Plus one on that “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should” comment!

Ernesto makes a wonderful point about the way internships and service-learning can provide that integrative experience that makes an education meaningful and relevant. But I do think that a real education is humanizing. A real education (as opposed to training, or certification) is expansive, mind-opening, and essential. Everyone deserves an education like that, and if humanity is going to make it, we need to commit to those values.

“My job is to get them to think and critically engage with what they are learning and the wealth of literature and knowledge that I’m asking them to engage with. My job is to get my students to think. My job is to create members of society that can critically consume what they are being told, not just blindly accept. That can recognize bias and think about how they think and in what ways they may be biased. I want them to question, I want them to question me, I want them to question their peers.” Yes, yes, and yes! Higher ed needs you, now, more than ever. Let’s talk about the R-1/Liberal arts dichotomy, which is becoming more complex all the time…

I’m a fan of the Parker Palmer quote you opened with as well. And I think your point that “we have also learn[ed] that it is not just about the subject we teach but all the intersectionalities that come with them” is really key. And yes, we do have to start with ourselves. Thanks for this, Luisa!

I really appreciate where you end up in this post — as educators we are called to notice where the inequities and problems are — and do something about them. The point about being sucked into seeing innovation as an end in itself is really apt.