Willie, I do not think I mentioned that "the idea of higher education is to get a job." In fact, I was myself challenging that notion. However, I agree that the purpose of liberal higher education is to impart critical thinking to students. But I wonder if that is true for all the disciplines. Especially in my "home" discipline, engineering, I think there is a great emphasis on learning certain skills and emphasizing certain topics as that is what the industry wants.
Aritra, I completely agree with what you have said in the post, especially, “classrooms … need to contribute to the 21st century college students’ needs.” With the growth of information technology, colleges cannot just serve as a place for information transfer. There has to be some more value for a student in attending college. Baxter Magolda talks about self-authorship as the 21st century college learning outcome. I recently wrote a blog post about it (http://ashish-dss.blogspot.com/2015/10/learning-partnerships-model-future-of.html). Hope you will enjoy reading it.
Critical thinking not only help students transfer knowledge into real life but also, as Freire suggests, helps them transform reality instead of just being in it as an object detached from it. It empowers students to be socially and politically aware humans who recognize and act against authoritarian practices and unethical practices. Critical thinking helps students to move toward intellectual freedom and gives meaning to education in the true sense of the terms.
Jacob, while I agree with you that students need to learn some key concepts in any discipline, I disagree that “information transfer” is the only way to teach those concepts. Students can still learn the important concepts by interacting with the concepts and trying to critically analyze them. As Freire notes, students should be introduced to the “methodological exactitude” with which they can approach the “key concepts” in any discipline instead of just accepting them as taken for granted truths. I agree with Amy (in teh previous comment) that it is necessary for the educators to think about an appropriate way to teach important concepts instead of just following the “banking system” of transferring information to them in a lecture.
Aaron, one of the reasons I think education cannot be neutral is because when it becomes neutral, it just reinforces the status quo, and pushes people to accept the status quo and adapt to it. This means, it does not give the ones involved in the teaching-learning process an opportunity to critically reexamine the taken-for-granted assumptions. Going back to the article “From safe spaces to brace spaces” by Arao and Clemens (2013), if people just aim for safe (read neutral) spaces, they just reinforce the dominant narrative. Similarly, if the education remains neutral, it just conforms to the set standards and hence, it no longer remains neutral but actually becomes domesticating.
Aaron, one of the reasons I think education cannot be neutral is because when it becomes neutral, it just reinforces the status quo, and pushes people to accept the status quo and adapt to it. This means, it does not give the ones involved in the teaching-learning process an opportunity to critically reexamine the taken-for-granted assumptions. Going back to the article “From safe spaces to brace spaces” by Arao and Clemens (2013), if people just aim for safe (read neutral) spaces, they just reinforce the dominant narrative. Similarly, if the education remains neutral, it just conforms to the set standards and hence, it no longer remains neutral but actually becomes domesticating.
Ross, just to add weight to Katie’s point about how we cannot divorce science from race, gender, sexuality, nationality, ability and other such constructs, let me give you my perspective.
I have my undergraduate and Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and trust me when I say this, I have seen institutional discrimination even while doing research (in EE) work so many times. If you look at how much money NSF is shelling out to conduct research research on minorities in engineering, you might be surprised. I myself do research on minority inclusion in engineering. I think you would realize that people (including the NSF) are spending time and money on this issue because it is worth talking, unlike your belief that it “create[s] new ones [problems].”
Ross, this is my fourth term teaching first year as an instructor at Virginia Tech, and no international student till date has submitted any work to me which was not written in English. And I am almost sure that international students do not ask for submitting work in their native language. As far as adhering to the university level standards for writing are concerned, you should realize that all the non-native English speaking international students have to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or equivalent test before coming to Tech and get an acceptable score on it. This means all the international students who are here a decent level of English proficiency as accepted by the university.
However, if you look at my blog post a little more closely or/and the comments made by Tanya/Homero on the post, you will realize that I am not even talking about the basic English proficiency. I am actually talking about writing styles. Writing styles (circular, linear, zig-zag) have nothing to do with language proficiency. My argument is that the dominant writing style in the US (or the ones followed/accepted by Caucasian cultures) is linear and it might create problems for students whose writing style is not the same, not only international students but also African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Indian-Americans, Native Americans and many others. Look at Homero's post(s) below and my point will be clearer. And this is where institutionalized discrimination happens when the student's writing style does not match the teacher's style.
Now, talking about university or publication standards, think about who has made those standards. If they are made by the dominant group (which in most of the cases is true), they will not be much accepting of writing styles of the minority groups. And this is how discrimination happens.
Thanks Homero! I agree with you that we need to keep the audience in mind. But again, we have to take a step back and see who is setting the standards for these journals. If it is the dominant group which is setting the standards, then we again have a problem of institutionalized discrimination when we ask people to stick to "journal standards". I know it is fine balance between being culturally inclusive and accepting writing which is difficult to comprehend. While all the people irrespective of their writing styles and language proficiency have the burden to make themselves understandable to the audience, the "audience" also has the responsibility of being more generous and inclusive of varied writing patterns in their definition of what is considered effective writing.
I did check the link which you sent. Unfortunately, we do not score high on institutionalized racism and this is exactly why "behave like a Roman while in Rome attitude problematic." It just perpetuates institutionalized racism.
And finally, though I did not talk to that guy about how is comment was discriminatory, but I did make sure that he gets to see this blog post. I know that is not the best thing to do but I am just afraid to speak up. I have been condemned (by the majority) in the past for speaking up and hence, have developed a deep fear of speaking against what I find unjust. Unfortunate, but true!!
Tanya, I completely agree with the fact that one should look at the context in mind and adjust their behavior accordingly. And that is called being inclusive and cognizant of the context. The problem arises when the other party is not being inclusive of others' context and is expecting a behavior completely suited to their own context. For example, taking the writing example again, a student should be made aware of the writing styles which prevalent in the US, but at the same time writing style is not something which can be changed in a day and hence, the professor should be cognizant of that. Also, coming back to pushing students to meet a certain standard, it is important to realize that those standards are also made the by dominant group. Actually, the Caucasian cultures have a linear writing style, but the African American and Hispanic cultures have a non linear writing pattern, so if we are asking everyone to adhere to the standard and to strive to meet the standard, we are again not being inclusive of a lot of domestic students to begin with.
As critical or culturally inclusive educators, we should not just stop by saying that "this is what students should be doing as this is what the standards are." We should rather aim to redefine the standards so that it is inclusive of our student population.
