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I’m founding a school called the University of Nothing.
This is a school that teaches no subject matter directly. Instead, this university will teach you how to learn, and while learning how to learn, you will indirectly learn something else.
My past 4 years in college, I’ve learned by a process that I will call cram-sorption learning. Information is given to you (for the most part) and it’s up to you t
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Comments
12.24.08
Great idea. I am a recent college graduate (May 2007) and have forgotten a lot of the specifics of classes I took. In the process I was able to learn how to learn, but many of my peers did not...
12.24.08
Chris, great comments. It's the typical cram-sorption approach (I was guilty of it too). Study a day or two before the exam, take the exam, and then forget you ever studied for that test. It's not that it doesn't work (which it did), its just the system is set up such that this approach could work....and that is a shame and needs to be changed.
12.24.08
Some things you shouldn't learn from direct discovery. One of them is that water, acid and potassium don't mix.
12.24.08
Jrandom42, haha..this is true and I agree. But what if you were allowed to learn through discovery learning? I guarantee you will remember this fact. Is there really a better way to learn, and retain that info, other than learning the hard way?
12.24.08
That depends on the skill of the EMTs, ER doctors, and plastic surgeons on whether or not you'll be able to go on learning. Is this the kind of risk you want your children to go through to learn NOT to do something? Curiosity is a good thing, but the risk of death and disfigurement in the pursuit of satisfying it is far too costly.
12.24.08
Jrandom42, right. This is why their is a teacher to facilitate the process.
12.24.08
JRandom42, show us your real name! You cant hide in anonymity forever...
12.24.08
My name is a psudonym.
JRandom is from Eric S. Raymond's J. Random Hacker (See New Hacker's Dictionary, Appendix B http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_50.html#SEC57).
42 is, of course, from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Deep Thought's answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
12.24.08
Charles Rosenberg, the UPenn prof for a seminar called Disease & Society my sophomore year, told us that all we'll remember learning from college, in terms of rote information, will be what we write papers on. He was right.
12.24.08
Andrea, Great comment. The more active you are in your learning, the more you will learn. Bottom line.
12.24.08
Hands-on learning is one method of learning. Some people excel at it, others do not.
What I like to quote in these types of situations is the multiple intelligences theory (see: http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm ).
The hands-on approach is also very subject oriented. At least for intro classes to Bio, Chem, and Physics, you can't do that as much as sociology, history and philosophy (I guess this may be a distinction between hard sciences and social sciences).
I do think that people need to learn how to think, analyze, process and construct knowledge, but I think that this may be a skill better suited for Junior/Senior level in high school and freshman/sophomore level in college. People need a head start on critical thinking :-)
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