One of these days we will get around to the topic of curriculum, but there are a lot of other topics to talk about first.
A common fantasy today is that people can just educate themselves; perhaps, with the aid of a computer, or some kind of Internet whatchamacallit. And, indeed they can. There are a lot of resources available online today, for free or nearly so. You can get all kinds of books in eBook formats, and even whole courses such as Hillsdale College’s Constitution 101 course. Isn’t that wonderful?
Yes, it is wonderful. But, actually, it is not so much different than the way things were forty years ago. In those days, you could also get books for free. It was called a “library.” And, you could get whole courses, from the best lecturers, although you might have had to pay a little for it. The Great Courses still does this. Maybe it would have been on audio cassette tape, rather than streaming video, and maybe it cost $150. But, so what.
So we see that, in fact, recent technological advances do almost nothing for higher education. There have been some advantages in the forming of communities online, via Facebook for example. And, you could interact with a mentor from a distance, via email or Skype. But, I think you could have done much the same thing with a newsletter or a telephone, in the 1960s.
You don’t really need anything at all for an education. If you simply went down a booklist, and actually read all the materials in it, you would get a better education than nearly all college graduates today, even at the top universities. Some people do this. But, it takes a certain dedication and commitment.
We are dealing with eighteen-year-olds here — eighteen-year-olds that have, usually, come from a schooling system in which they are told what to do all the time, and who are in the habit of not doing anything unless they are told to do it, and who have been motivated by the Carrot and the Stick, whose inherent logic is to do as little as possible to achieve the external goal (getting the Carrot or avoiding the Stick). Much of the degradation in standards over the past 70 years can be traced to the constant pressure of Students to lower the requirements to get the Carrot (a grade or diploma), so that they could do less and less. Since Students pay the bills, they have tended to get their way. Maybe an 18-year-old with years of independently-directed homeschool experience could undertake an effective program of independent study, but these are rare.
Among the serious homeschoolers, during the ages 16-17 the student can be almost entirely self-directed. The Student may meet with the Teacher (the parent) perhaps once a month, for an hour or two. The Teacher confirms that the Student spent the last month in diligent industry, as was promised a month ago. Then they together make a plan of study for the next month. Extended to the college level, a single Teacher, it would seem, could oversee the self-education of perhaps forty Students of this sort, with only one in-person meeting per month, and perhaps even by Skype. Then, the college could be very inexpensive. But, this requires a level of self-discipline among students that is very rare, and is typically the outcome of years of previous training; years in which there was, at least in the beginning, a much closer Teacher-Student relationship.
So now we have a Mentor, or a Teacher (I will use the word Teacher for now, although they are really a Mentor.) The Teacher is a guide. He interacts with the student, to keep them focused on the task, and direct them toward high-quality uses of their time (good books, etc.). The student may discuss the materials with the Teacher, and write papers and so forth. Ultimately, the Teacher can serve as a confirmation that the work was done, what work was done, and that an education was achieved. The student is declared to have Graduated.
There have been attempts to establish this Teacher-Student relationship at a distance, via email and Skype for example. There are some potential advantages, such as the possibility that the student can live at home and thus save a lot of money on living expenses. A more adventurous student could live near the beach in Belize. But, these experiments have not worked very well. Without regular, direct in-person interaction, students can easily slack off and wander in different directions, subject to all sorts of various influences. This is also related to the Teacher/Student ratio. You can have a higher ratio (20) or a lower one (10), but if the ratio gets too high, we lose the Teacher/Student interaction that is the purpose of the “college” to begin with. In practice, I think a lower number (12) is better. This is not actually that low. If you consider a homeschooling mother with twelve students, we would probably consider that very high. It could be five; but then we have a cost issue. In the past, it was often one: Adam Smith, the economist, was for a while employed as the Teacher for the son of a wealthy family, a common arrangement in that time. For a while, Austrian economist Carl Menger did the same. Perhaps wealthy families will consider this method again, in the future. I don’t think the overall results of sending their children to today’s universities have been too successful.
From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.
From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.
From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.
From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.
“Meditations,” by Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome. 167 A.D.
Now we have an in-person relationship. If we have multiple students, we can begin a variety of activities that students can do together, such as discussions, debates, presentations, and even things such as sports teams. We can’t do these with multiple students with a long-distance relationship.
But, perhaps more important than all of that, we have formed a real-world community. Not only do we have direct in-person interaction with the Teacher, we have direct in-person interaction with the other students — students which are also following the same program, and who share the same ideals and values. We create bonds between the students, and a sense of shared purpose, somewhat like a soccer team, lead by the Teacher. This can be very important to the sense of focus and commitment, of the typical eighteen-year-old Student.
Since we are all together now, in person, we can imagine some of the details of this community.
You could argue that our college should not be defined by a stack of bricks and mortar. We can just rent some office space somewhere. Give Regus a call. Remember, there are no classes and no lectures. We could use some space for things like discussions and private meetings with the Teacher. Maybe Starbucks would work, and it would only cost $2.25 a person. The park might be nice in warm weather. Students could find housing wherever it was available. They would learn something about living on their own. The college is not in the apartment leasing and catering business. If the best college is “Mark Hopkins on one end of a log, and a Student on the other,” it seems like anything would work, as long as you have a Mark Hopkins.
But, this did not work out so well in practice. When students were dispersed throughout the city or town, and gatherings and meetings were held in somewhat perfunctory circumstances, the sense of community was badly compromised. Students were all off doing their own thing. Pretty soon they were being blown about by various influences, and their studies suffered.
So, in the interest of gaining all the advantages of community, it was found that some care and attention to these details was important. Perhaps the college could be located in a somewhat isolated situation, where there were fewer distractions and outside influences, and all the students and the Teacher would spend much more time together. Or, perhaps it could be in a big city, but the students were all living together in tight-knit circumstances. Maybe they would all cook and eat together. Maybe some attention to the quality of the facilities used for gatherings and meetings would impart a sense of seriousness and permanence, instead of transience and casual unimportance.
Not only did we not talk about curriculum today, but we did not even get to the topic that I was planning to talk about. Maybe next time.
