I have been an academic for close to 25 years. The one thing I’ll never get over is that the people who seem to not want to learn anything are the teachers. There is an old saying “like cement – all mixed up and already set”. The students on the other hand are like sponges, at least in my graduate program. 23 out of 26 of them asked for the program to be extended in credits because they wanted more courses and more knowledge. These are great kids and have been for 11 years. There were a few exceptions, but they left once the real work started.
I am not concerned about my IMA students what I am concerned about is those students who are not getting the proper perspective of knowledge in this extremely fast-paced changing world. While school boards sit and debate textbooks or laptops, other countries have their fetuses working overtime and on the weekends.
We better start to realize it took pioneers to start this country, brave men and women who undertook hardship and strife to head out for new frontiers. Not knowing what would happen or if they would make it. Today we have a society of entitled slackers of every age. As my father would say “I’d like to stick a shoe in you’re a%^”. He always told me, “If your hands are cold I’ll buy you gloves but get them the hell out of your pockets because there is work to be done”. And today there is some serious work to be done. But not lifting 94 lb. cement bags and shoveling sand.
The work today is fortunately done with our minds. And like they say a mind is like a parachute, it only works if it’s open. We need the educators to stop holding on to antiquated traditions and move with the times, literally the New York Times. See the article below.
In a recent article in the Boston Herald it talks about moving past the traditional textbook. I could not agree more. We need to get a move on and adapt to this ever “flattening world” and we better do it soon.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1197337