Many of my peers within academia seem oblivious to the rapid change happening all around us. You get that when you see them trying to still ban smartphones even though for many students that is now their main computer. Professors are worried about texting even though that ship has sailed; just you wait….it won’t be long before no movie theater puts up the notes to turn off the phones and you’ll see theaters keep the lights up so that other cell phone screens won’t annoy you that much. But I digress here…the foolish part is anyone who doesn’t see what is coming here.
Wired Magazine provides just another bit of evidence to my point. I wrote earlier about a little struggle at my college over whether we professors should be actively engaged in the change that is happening all around. My contention is that others outside of academia are defining who we are and what we do, and as they do that, we lose the ability to impact the debate. So, in early March, Wired posted this article about how “Colleges need to act like startups.” The point of the article is not the point here. You can certainly go read it and come back…..I’ll wait.
The point is that two people who are not really professors, not someone deeply involved in academia (based on the little bio provided by Wired), wrote this article. That’s fine enough, of course, but the point is that this is not some academic magazine in a conversation among people who are in the inside of the actual work. No, this is a technology magazine speaking to people outside of academia. These writers, and many others like them, are impacting what people think, expect and plan on demanding from academia, whether or not the person writing really knows what they are talking about. They are defining the discussion.
Did you see that the SAT once again changed its test? Well, if you read about the change, then you may have noticed that they have created a deliberate partnership with Sal Khan on the now famous Khan Academy. Fine enough, right? Think its no big deal? Well, I like what Khan has done, but at the end of the day, his work in his math explanations are really no big deal. He did what 1000s of math teachers do every day….write on a board making a simple explanation. Sure, some do it better than others and Sal does a great job (or at least good enough that I could easily follow along as someone who is not a math expert nor really like dealing with math). Yet, check it out—here is the famous and powerful and impacting SAT saying that rather than some sort of connection with college professors trying to create aid for students studying for this now legendary test to see if the child can get into college….the very place that these people teach…instead of the SAT working with one of us professors, they turned to an outsider who was quick with simple video.
I’m not jealous of Sal, really. And I really do like his math videos and have used them with my daughters. The point is that those outside of the industry are leading the discussion. The foolish thing to do on this day, the so-called April Fool’s Day, is to act like everything is going to remain the same simply because you want it to. The fool says that.
I don’t want to be a fool (though some would say “too late”). So, I want to continue to engage the discussion. We must, especially if we want to take the country in a strong direction. Maybe you doubt that, thinking back to some professors who, shall we say, weren’t really all that up to speed on much happening new in the world. OK, sure….but on the whole, if we really want to fix what is going on in education, we must get our educators involved in the process. Otherwise, the very people who can see key strategies and tactics to improve the system will be on the outside while other “experts” are brought in by the SAT and Wired to write articles.