Nice post that I really connect with. This is my third engineering degree and I couldn’t have done it without my musical background. I’ve had so many eureka moments (solving some engineering problem) while practising a piece that I really cannot see myself without my art. Take the art from me and the engineering falls apart. Arts (liberal or performing) and STEM are seen as mutually exclusive vocations in most parts of the world. Men are discouraged from doing anything artsy while women are discouraged from science and math. Hence people end up with lives not lived to its full.

I know your fear and I once had the same fear too. Until I opened up to a Professor in my department that once worked in an engineering company before becoming an academic and what she told me was that, in the Engineering profession, every entry-level engineer has this same fear and that no one is going to expect you to know how the company works in details. General knowledge, gained from an undergraduate degree, is all that’s needed. They will work you through their standards when you become an employee. So my suggestion would be to talk to people already working in your field and ask them how they prepared themselves for the work environment.

Great post. But we have to also ask the question of what the student hopes to gain from a school. Some just want to explore the theoretical limits of some field regardless of financial gain while others see it as a necessary step to making a lot of money. But schools are not designed to be fluid and meet everyone’s needs hence the problem of most schools being setup to cater to a few ideal students while the rest drone along.

I think it’s a great initiative. While I understand the critics of such a move and their argument (that low income students need more help), I also think that the prison system will be better at reforming inmates if the inmates have an access to quality education. The overarching question still will be – ‘Should inmates be preferred over low income students?’ but dignity of a person, incarcerated or not should not factor into an argument for or against this move.

I think it’s a great initiative. While I understand the critics of such a move and their argument (that low income students need more help), I also think that the prison system will be better at reforming inmates if the inmates have an access to quality education. The overarching question still will be – ‘Should inmates be preferred over low income students?’ but dignity of a person, incarcerated or not should not factor into an argument for or against this move.

I like your post because I’ve had to think about my research not producing significant contributions before. I think bias in research is here to stay without a comprehensive shake up of our educational system. In my department, I have to publish at least four papers to have my diploma and I’ve been doing experiments for the past two years not knowing whether my results will be publishable or not. I mentioned my fears to my PI and she said, ‘if we end up with nothing then we know what not to do’! Not many students are as lucky as I am though, and at the end of the day many try to bend their experiments to give meaningful results.

well, I agree with you but also disagree. I think one can get away with ‘distractions’ in some classes and not get away with it in others. A class in which a student has to learn a life saving medical technique should be free from any form of distraction even if the student is trying to understand this procedure using the device. He/she can do that later. Another example would be an Introduction to Biohazards lab. You would want all your students to be focused on you in these classes since any mistake they make is yours as well. However, there are also many good sides with technology since it can be used sometimes, with great success, concurrently with a teaching session. It just depends on the class.

I see your point and I agree somewhat but I don’t think the blame is fully on humans and I’ll explain. Most of us grew up without the plethora of technology that we have today and therefore we can make a choice not to get plugged in to this ‘crazy’ world of hi-tech but people born into this new system almost have no hope (i use the word hope lightly) since that’s all they know. I don’t think they are to blame for having short attention spans etc.

In the same vein with what Krystalyn said above, It is more important to know what to do with information that to have the information itself. Anyone can google anything but most students don’t know how to go about verifying the accuracy of this information. It could also be due to an attitude of believing everything on the internet.

I think the sum of Freire’s talk is that the journey is more important than the end result. The journey is simply critical thinking and reason which make a student (out of curiosity) pursue knowledge. This is the way great inventors, educators, scientists etc have always learned. However, we should also realize that today’s model of ‘receive, memorize, and repeat’ is maybe born out of the need for mass learning with the least time spent while critical learning with self direction is for those who have that curiosity to self direct. Finding a way to merge the two and have the positives of both learning systems will be splendid.