Repost: Education Must Be Free?
Posted by Kushana Torumekia at 4/22/2009 1:43 PM 
Categories: Open Source, Around Campus, Education, Distance Learning
Tags: Open Source Around Campus Education Distance Learning
Categories: Open Source, Around Campus, Education, Distance Learning
Tags: Open Source Around Campus Education Distance Learning
I suspect this is advertisement for his textbook service, however, I will post it:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705298649,00.html
I can think of several problems with his ideas (which are not all bad), the first of which is feedback.
Teaching is a kind of performance, it is interactive. I cannot pass recordings into a slot in a black box and get exam papers handed back. Teaching is like live theater - or live music, once recorded there is something a little pickled, a little dead about it.
Also, I do not wish to compete with the latest song or the scores of distractions available on a computer: I cannot. I am not trying to entertain. There are always new ideas for taking the drudgery and suffering out of education: there is no way around it. Extended concentration and the effort of learning new things will always be difficult and (sometimes) dull. There are always new ideas for geting around the fact that education is 'being talked at', by either a book or a person. A teacher is (or should be) an expert (or at least a very quick hand with research) — a teacher must always know more than her students. This is not egalitarian and it does not privilege the ignorance of non-experts: I am sorry, that is how it works. If you want to learn about anything you must first go to someone who knows about it.
What these new models also seem cloudy on (like the "Free Stores" of the 60's) is how teachers make a living. Take this blog, for example. According to my helper it has a readership that can be counted on one hand. (I am not disappointed: even one reader was a greater success than I had hoped for.) I have (gladly) paid fees to set up and maintain this site (including keeping my helper in pizza). If this were a business, rather than a hobby, the fees and the man-hours we have put into it would be highly unwise: we have not made a cent. (Which was what my helper cautioned when I asked about all the flashing things and unsolicited emails ...) I am not holding out a hat: I enjoy this for its own sake or I would stop paying the fee. That said, the public has not beaten a path to this font of free knowledge. (Of course, this is an experiment — a long, but necessary, exercise in doing things the wrong way.)
Perhaps paying, and inconveniencing themselves by traveling to learn, makes education more valuable.
(While I am musing about this weblog, I see I need to write about the Bible more: another project for this summer.)
-Kushana, who could say a thing or two about writing a dissertation on a typewriter ...
(two sheets of paper, a heavy pencil or marker and a ruler)
... that makes four things.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705298649,00.html
I can think of several problems with his ideas (which are not all bad), the first of which is feedback.
Teaching is a kind of performance, it is interactive. I cannot pass recordings into a slot in a black box and get exam papers handed back. Teaching is like live theater - or live music, once recorded there is something a little pickled, a little dead about it.
Also, I do not wish to compete with the latest song or the scores of distractions available on a computer: I cannot. I am not trying to entertain. There are always new ideas for taking the drudgery and suffering out of education: there is no way around it. Extended concentration and the effort of learning new things will always be difficult and (sometimes) dull. There are always new ideas for geting around the fact that education is 'being talked at', by either a book or a person. A teacher is (or should be) an expert (or at least a very quick hand with research) — a teacher must always know more than her students. This is not egalitarian and it does not privilege the ignorance of non-experts: I am sorry, that is how it works. If you want to learn about anything you must first go to someone who knows about it.
What these new models also seem cloudy on (like the "Free Stores" of the 60's) is how teachers make a living. Take this blog, for example. According to my helper it has a readership that can be counted on one hand. (I am not disappointed: even one reader was a greater success than I had hoped for.) I have (gladly) paid fees to set up and maintain this site (including keeping my helper in pizza). If this were a business, rather than a hobby, the fees and the man-hours we have put into it would be highly unwise: we have not made a cent. (Which was what my helper cautioned when I asked about all the flashing things and unsolicited emails ...) I am not holding out a hat: I enjoy this for its own sake or I would stop paying the fee. That said, the public has not beaten a path to this font of free knowledge. (Of course, this is an experiment — a long, but necessary, exercise in doing things the wrong way.)
Perhaps paying, and inconveniencing themselves by traveling to learn, makes education more valuable.
(While I am musing about this weblog, I see I need to write about the Bible more: another project for this summer.)
-Kushana, who could say a thing or two about writing a dissertation on a typewriter ...
(two sheets of paper, a heavy pencil or marker and a ruler)
... that makes four things.
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