The Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules have made their way around the blogosphere a bit recently. They’re a great set of rules that, while targed at art students. One of my favorites, however, is this:
General Duties of a Student: Pull everything out of your teacher. Pull everything out of your fellow students.
What I like most about this is the expectation that students demand more of their teachers, and of their fellow students. According to this rule, it is the duty of each student to get everything they can out of their interactions with those in class, instructors and fellow students. I really like this idea. I like the notion that students are duty-bound to learn from other students, and to get them to learn more themselves. Instead of a model where the instructor hands pristine knowledge off to students in a unilateral way, this rule fosters a model where the instructor isn’t the only source for learning or motivation to learn.
This is something I’ll probably start putting on my class syllabi. I mean, when was the last time one of your instructors told you in class that you should feel obligated to get the most out of your fellow students? We don’t encourage this enough, I don’t think, and we should.
Academia is the gatekeeper of the “Meritocracy”. One’s educational degree, to a large degree determines your status in life. In its current state, students enter the machine to be ground down into pre-determined sizes so that they may locate themselves within the machine of industrial capitalism. By jumping through hoops, individuals are able to validate their intelligence and ability to fulfill specific tasks and with that gain access to careers and lifestyles denied to those who have not suffered through the process.
Why would it be the students obligation/duty to educate their classmates? We live in an individualistic society where you look out for number one. I am not paying tuition to teach others or to learn from my peers, why should I be expected to pay to train others for their careers.
I believe in socialism and sharing but I don’t know if I have patience to assist in the intellectual development of others unless they are my friends. It may be a nice ideal to aspire towards but I do not think by any means that it should be a duty.
What do you think?
Should you pay to take the time to care what I think?
Why should I care?