The Future of Education

May 1 was decision day, the day by which high school seniors need to have selected which college they are going to attend.  Sarah has just been through the whole college application-admission-decision process and it was exhausting and stressful for everyone involved, especially her.  And we've talked a lot about "what's worth it," at our house -- which schools might be worth accumulating student debt for, and which ones aren't.  The cautionary tales in the newspaper, about young adults whose hopes for the future are on hold year after year, because of student loans that are outsized compared to their salaries, who feel like they can't get married, they can't buy a home.  The kids who borrowed money and got degrees and now can't find work in their field, and work as bartenders.  The kids who didn't even get the degree but still have the loans, and the parents who co-signed them.  The discussions in Washington about how much expensive student loans should be.

The major reason I have been absent from this blog for so long was Philip Zelikow's world history course on Coursera.  The course started in mid-January and ended in late April.  I was one of the almost 5000 on line students who completed the course and earned my Statement of Accomplishment.  I printed it out and put it in the folder with the certificates for all those courses I am required to do at work, even though no one cares that I did this and no one will ever ask me for it.  Registration was easy (a click of the mouse) and the course was free, although I bought the textbook and most of books that were on the additional reading list.  I didn't do all the reading but I did a lot of it and I watched every lecture, with frequent pauses for the note-taking that was required to do well on the weekly quizzes.  I printed out the maps and graphs that were the course's visual aids and they are with my notes in a binder that is now on the shelf with my textbook.

Of course a free online course -- even an excellent one like this -- is not the same as being in a small seminar with an excellent professor.  You don't have the real-time, in person discussion that helps solidify learning, and I didn't have to write anything at all, which certainly would have been required in Professor Zelikow's in-person, for-credit class at the University of Virginia.  But most university classes -- especially the introductory classes that I have been required to take along with my classmates at every institution of higher education that I have ever been enrolled in -- are not small seminars with excellent professors.  If you're lucky, the introduction to art history or political science or psychology class that you are required to take is taught by someone who has mastered the art of conveying information in a sufficiently engaging way to keep the attention of the hundreds of students in the class (a task that is probably far more difficult now because there are so many more things available to distract students than there were when I was in school).

Predictably the pushback at universities has started, the fear that professors will be replaced, that universities will be dismantled.  I would have more sympathy for this position if the courses that were at risk were seminars-with-excellent-professors, but they aren't -- they are (for now anyway) those huge classes that are required to get a degree, and at many schools are not available to all the students who need them.  Already in California there is discussion about giving credit for on line courses if the on campus version is not available (I don't know if the proposed legislation passed or not).  But it's too late.  The current model -- young people taking on huge debt to attend universities where they can't get the classes they need and when they can they are in huge classes that are no more personal than my video lectures by Professor Zelikow -- is broken.  It's going to change, and it needs to.  There are new models already, and there will be more.

Almost Done

I haven't posted for months because what free time I have (which is not all that much) has been taken up with other things (probably more about that later), so it's time to catch up on some things going on in the neighborhood.

At long last the never-ending construction at the Pelham/East Rock Springs/North Morningside intersection seems to be almost complete.  For months it seemed like nothing at all was happening (Tom had heard there was a lawsuit, but I assumed it was just taking a while to get a new design finalized and approved that would leave the bypass lane that allows drivers from East Morningside to North Morningside avoid the four-way stop).  Whatever the reason for the delay, not long ago the work restarted and at this point is nearly complete.  New curbs, new sidewalks, and new sod are all in place, although there still are some orange cones around and things are not quite finished.  But yesterday when we went by the new grass was already turning brown.  Without watering, I don't think it will make it, and no one is going to water it.  So there you have it.

Likewise, the de-paved area at Cumberland and North Morningside is now filled and sodded, with stone neighborhood marker in place (either that or it's a tombstone indicating the burial place of a Mr. or Ms. Park).

Walking through the area last weekend I asked Iain what he thought the new parklet should be used for; right now all that is there, besides the neighborhood marker/tombstone is a single, lonely-looking shrub.  He said he thought bands should set up and play there, which I thought was a great idea.

This conversation took place on the way to Celebration of Summer, MLPA's annual celebration of the end of school.  It used to be on the Friday at the end of the last week of school, but this year (presumably because of Memorial Day weekend) it was the Saturday of the weekend before APS ended classes.  There was music and snow cones and pony rides and inflatable jumpy climbing things for small- and middle-sized children and ice cream (which was fabulous) and beer for adults. The neighborhood was there blankets and lawn chairs.  It looked to me like everything came off without a hitch, in spite of the repeated last-minute requests for volunteers that kept being posted on the neighborhood email lists.  And somehow the tradition of older elementary school and middle school kids armed with powerful water guns has been eliminated, much to the relief I am sure of the organizers and the musicians with instruments and electronic gear.

And for weeks if not months on my way to work in the morning I've seen workers going into the former Caramba/Waffle Tap location on North Highland.  The brown paper still covers the windows except for the one now covered plywood, and new neon signs, not yet turned on, promise pizza and calzone at some point in the future.  Here's hoping the next restaurant in this location does better than the last two did.

Update:  Iain and I stopped by the former Caramba/Waffle Tap site so I could take the pictures posted above and learned that the new restaurant will be called Timone's (or is that timone's?) and that they are now hiring.

But that wasn't the only sign posted -- there was also this one, on the door.

More to follow, I'm sure.