Over the summer, I met a woman who worked with me from New Zealand and she commented on how college hungry we are in the United States. I was a little bit confused by what she meant by college hungry. She replied that in New Zealand, she never went to college, but now she owns two group homes. I am quite certain that this would not even be an option for a person who did not go to college here.
So, I want to talk about something that a few posts ago I said I would talk about very soon. Apprentice learning. During our conversation, we discussed possible ways of doing post-secondary education that doesn't involve college. She said, and I completely agree with her, that "not all students who go to college, which is supposed to be everyone in the United States, are ready or have what it takes to go to college. They also just might not want to go to college."
We discussed that in New Zealand, they still have apprenticeships. Long ago (I don't know how long ago) and maybe still a little bit today, this was college. The only thing is that this was actually going to get you ready for what you wanted to do. For instance, if you wanted to be a shoemaker, you would apprentice yourself to a shoemaker.
But now, if you want to be a shoemaker, you have to go to college. In the process of going to college, you have to take out a bunch of student loans (which put you in debt) and you have to take a class on philosophy. I don't know about you, but I am not entirely sure that there is a philosophy of shoemakers class at college. What I am trying to say here while being facetious is that apprenticeships actually prepare the student or person for what they are going to do for possibly the rest of their life.
I know someone who graduated with a Geography Information Systems (GIS) major (they create the maps that go into GPS systems for your car), and he never had an experience in creating a map for an actual setting besides classes. He never had, as we sometimes call them, an internship. He also had to take a philosophy, English, psychology and a math class to name but a few. What do these have to do with GIS? Nothing.
What I am proposing is that our college classes get us better prepared by actually creating experience-based learning. For instance, going back to the GIS major, have an internship. What I propose is that we move away from book-based learning because a lot of our upcoming college students seriously struggle with reading. However, here is the ticker, there are some in that new generation of college students who comprehend and learn best with reading the textbooks (I am guilty of being one of these ridiculously odd people).
So, how can we find a balance between apprenticeship learning and book learning? At least half-and-half, where half of the class time focuses on book learning and the other half of the time focus on apprenticeship learning. Or, we can create a better democratic classroom and allow the students to choose whether they want to do the book learning or the apprentice learning.
In the end, our society is changing, and our colleges are beginning to be dumping grounds for all students , even those who are not ready for the current college (I know that sounds harsh, but that seems to me to be what is happening). Some students, I would postulate, graduate high school reading at maybe a 6th grade level and they are presented with college texts. Are they ready to read them? Most likely not. Our society is changing, our learning is changing, our students are changing, college must change for them.
One last thought, what I am proposing here is not a dumbing or watering down of the curriculum. It is a change in the way of teaching the curriculum, by getting rid of textbooks and not requiring them and just offering on-the-job or on-the-apprenticeship learning.
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