Too busy for learning?
Bruce Murphy, President of Northwestern College in Iowa, just published a short article arguing that college life these days, for both students and professors, is simply too busy. He fears our pressures/desires to take the most courses, engage extra-curricular activities, double major (and even add a minor!) are leaving students with little time for personal reflection and growth. And consequently, an ordinary college education is woefully inadequate if gaining a sense of wisdom is one of its goals. Too often, students hurry along not knowing where they're going, why they're headed that way, and if it's really important. This emphasis on "quantity over quality" can certainly serve as one explanation for the all-too-common feeling of disenchantment so many college students experience.

The implication here is that true learning, being educated, involves much more than simply acquiring knowledge and skills, knowing, processing, and communicating information. It has something to do with who we are as human beings, and how we will live our lives interacting with everyone and everything around us. It has a great deal to do with exploring the complexities of self and other, and moving toward a greater understanding of who we really are. Jorge Luis Borges put it this way.

"Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment- the moment in which a [person] finds out, once and for all, who [he or she] really is."

Although not Murphy's main point, we have here yet another endorsement of studying the humanities, a call for us to tap into the accumulated human wisdom they represent, and a plea for us to slow down and look beyond "getting a job" or "getting ahead." It is also though a clear critique of the context for studying the humanities currently found on most college campuses- one that is too impersonal, too hurried, too disconnected from other subjects, realities (like nature), ideas, and events.

It made me think how the Castle Rock Institute programs can be seen as responding to both critiques. Our programs are designed to encourage community, cooperation and communication, to explore practical applications of what we glean from studying the humanities, to integrate personal, physical, and intellectual challenges/growth, and to discover connections between what we study, what we think and do, and who we are. Doing all of this together, weaving into a whole, is much different than ordinary college life, and much better, I would claim, at fostering the sort of learning Murphy describes.

Here is a link to the full article, "Beyond Busy."
- posted by Jeff @ 1:26 PM