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Old 09-18-2006, 02:36 PM   #1
coberst
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Default How the cow ate the cabbage

How the Cow Ate the Cabbage

I am a retired engineer and I shall give to you what my understanding of the education of an engineer is all about; I do this because I think that almost all professional education in the US and elsewhere are very similar. I think that many young people have an uninformed view of these matters and I think that such erroneous views are detrimental to understanding the world we live in.

A young person receiving an education in engineering is taught the algorithms, patterns, and paradigms of their chosen profession. Essentially the student is taught the manual of the profession; just as a mechanic is taught the very same thing regarding the repair of automobiles. We were given the knowledge necessary to quickly become a productive worker for our employer.

The education of the professional is a rote learning of specific facts and how to utilize the tools of the trade as the patterns of the specific job dictate. The manual of the profession is temporally sufficient for the graduating student but the temporality is short lived. The work place is very dynamic and the graduate can function in the specific work place only for a short time before the reality of change forces the static individual into obsolescence because the manual of the profession is functionally diminishing as it is being taught.

I think that the educational institutions prepare graduates that fit the desires of the corporation but not the needs of the graduate. The work place is a rapidly evolving environment and the individual is not prepared properly to be a rapidly evolving worker.

Our institutions of learning are following the dictates of the corporation with little consideration of the student. Because this situation will never change until the citizens demand it one must recognize that any change must be contemplated as the responsibility of each individual. The individual can depend upon no institution to prepare them for the ability to evolve through out their work life.

The specificity of a given high school or college education is very beneficial during the early years of ones work life but this specificity is a drag on the rest of the work life. One must, in my opinion, learn how to learn and how to become a more flexible citizen thereby rolling with the punches of change.

A word to the wise is said to be sufficient, but I doubt that any of us qualify for a high grade in wisdom. Nevertheless, if you do not prepare yourself for such a future you might very well live to regret it.

I would say that the very best way to prepare yourself for the future is to learn CT (Critical Thinking). If you were not taught CT somewhere in your schooling you would be smart to make that the first item in a list of self-actualizing self-learning activities.
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Old 09-18-2006, 03:14 PM   #2
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Default Re: How the cow ate the cabbage

Quote:
Originally Posted by coberst View Post
I do this because I think that almost all professional education in the US and elsewhere are very similar.
And I think it's very different from country to country, from what I've heard. I hope to be studying in Brazil this time next year.

Quote:
A young person receiving an education in engineering is taught the algorithms, patterns, and paradigms of their chosen profession. Essentially the student is taught the manual of the profession; just as a mechanic is taught the very same thing regarding the repair of automobiles. We were given the knowledge necessary to quickly become a productive worker for our employer.
I hardly agree with this. As a fourth-year Mechanical Engineering student who still doesn't know the field in which he desires to work upon graduation, I can't be learning a very specific field unless I elect to; the courses required for every ME student cover a pretty wide spectrum, from thermal systems to machine design, with design process, communication, and manufacturing in between and all wrapped together with control systems. This is intended for us to have a wide base of education so that we can select a specific field onto which we can edify our knowledge in the workplace.

To be honest, I'd rather have more of a vocational training than I'm getting.

As you can see, I'm assuming your "education" to mean one's college education, and not one's professional education. If you intend the latter this response really doesn't mean anything.

Quote:
The education of the professional is a rote learning of specific facts and how to utilize the tools of the trade as the patterns of the specific job dictate. The manual of the profession is temporally sufficient for the graduating student but the temporality is short lived. The work place is very dynamic and the graduate can function in the specific work place only for a short time before the reality of change forces the static individual into obsolescence because the manual of the profession is functionally diminishing as it is being taught.
The Halliburton plant here in Carrollton is currently scratching at the doors of recent and soon-to-be engineering graduates because they'll be doing hiring that they haven't done in ages. I worked there for about three months this summer and I regularly got emails about celebrations of the twentieth, thirtieth, and fortieth anniversaries of people working in that company. Sure, the field is a dynamic place, but I do think that you overestimate the rapidity of the change and underestimate the capabilities of the engineers to adapt.

Quote:
I think that the educational institutions prepare graduates that fit the desires of the corporation but not the needs of the graduate.
And what basis do you have on which you can make this statement? Also, what do you mean by "the corporation"? Different employers require very different things from their employees, and the pedagogical bodies can hardly cover all the bases, hence their very general curricula.

Quote:
The work place is a rapidly evolving environment and the individual is not prepared properly to be a rapidly evolving worker.
Some are, some aren't, but the rapid evolution is both caused by and followed by the marketplace, so shouldn't that be the corporation's concern, while effectively educating its students should be that of the educational institutions?

Quote:
I would say that the very best way to prepare yourself for the future is to learn CT (Critical Thinking). If you were not taught CT somewhere in your schooling you would be smart to make that the first item in a list of self-actualizing self-learning activities.
Even though I disagree with most of what you said in the OP, I don't think I'll disagree with this.

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Old 09-18-2006, 06:38 PM   #3
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Default Re: How the cow ate the cabbage

I recently got my B.Sc. undergrad in psychology, so I've got a view of at least one point of view from one institution of this day and age. By virtue of studying a subject area where no one expects to get work in their field, or if they do expect it, then they've probably got false hopes or they're in it all the way to a Phd and then some, I can't possibly have been trained for entering into any one category in the workplace. I do think that my program was very research oriented, but not exclusively so. Lots of people say that it is a very well-rounded person who comes out of a psychology program, and they can offer a lot of varied skills to the workplace. I doubt that, I think that almost any university education will give you a lot of the same skills that my specific program gave me (what were those skills again? )
All I know is that I'm certainly not feeling railroaded towards anything specific. Well, I suppose I love doing research, and maybe that only came about because I was so exposed to it, but I certainly don't mind it, and I certainly don't feel like the way research in psychology is done is drastically changing such that I won't be able to keep up. I'm also doubtful that anyone in an arts program is being trained specifically for the workplace.
But I also went into university in the first place to learn, and I think I've always had that impression about it, regardless about what I would be studying. If I wanted a good job, I'd have gone into a skilled trade, taken a year of school, done some apprenticeship, be working successfully right now and probably be sitting on a wad of cash.
I suppose I agree that a lot of education doesn't teach one how to keep up one's knowledge base and functionality in the workforce, but then again, I'm not sure it could. I also don't agree that all education should either, if it's somehow possible. I'm of the opinion that universities exist for people to learn, and unless you're specifically studying how to keep up in the workplace, I wouldn't make it mandatory. College though, you go there to train yourself for something fairly specific. In terms of what you're talking about though, life skills essentially, I really don't think either place could teach it much.
I've never taken a course specifically called a critical thinking course. However, I like to think that I do so, and have learned to do so from my parents and from my post-secondary education, particularly 4th year courses. I'm not sure how this really helps though. I think it just makes you more upset when people around you and especially above you in your workplace aren't doing so.
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Old 09-19-2006, 03:28 AM   #4
coberst
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Default Re: How the cow ate the cabbage

For a 12 to 18 years period from the age of 6 to our mid twenties we have lived constantly in an educational system wherein we seldom if ever learned to function intellectually independent of outside direction. We have never learned how to learn!

How is it possible for such an individual to develop the internal processes (bootstrap) that allow him or her to become an independent critically self-conscious thinker? Bootstrap is defined as: designed to function independently of outside direction—capable of using one internal function or process to control another.

Like the PC setting in front of us we seem to have an automatic default position. Our default position is ‘reject’ when encountering any idea that does not fit in our already learned patterns and algorithms.

Somehow the individual must find a way to change that default position from ‘reject’ to ‘examine critically’. Of course—how do we every not reject this message?

These following definitions come from: http://www.criticalthinking.org/reso...glossary.shtml

critical listening: A mode of monitoring how we are listening so as to maximize our accurate understanding of what another person is saying. By understanding the logic of human communication-that everything spoken expresses point of view, uses some ideas and not others, has implications, etc.-critical thinkers can listen so as to enter sympathetically and analytically into the perspective of others. See critical speaking, critical reading, critical writing, elements of thought, intellectual empathy.

critical person: One who has mastered a range of intellectual skills and abilities. If that person generally uses those skills to advance his or her own selfish interests, that person is a critical thinker only in a weak or qualified sense. If that person generally uses those skills fairmindedly, entering empathically into the points of view of others, he or she is a critical thinker in the strong or fullest sense. See critical thinking.

critical reading: Critical reading is an active, intellectually engaged process in which the reader participates in an inner dialogue with the writer. Most people read uncritically and so miss some part of what is expressed while distorting other parts. A critical reader realizes the way in which reading, by its very nature, means entering into a point of view other than our own, the point of view of the writer. A critical reader actively looks for assumptions, key concepts and ideas, reasons and justifications, supporting examples, parallel experiences, implications and consequences, and any other structural features of the written text, to interpret and assess it accurately and fairly. See elements of thought.

critical society: A society which rewards adherence to the values of critical thinking and hence does not use indoctrination and inculcation as basic modes of learning (rewards reflective questioning, intellectual independence, and reasoned dissent). Socrates is not the only thinker to imagine a society in which independent critical thought became embodied in the concrete day-to-day lives of individuals; William Graham Sumner, North America's distinguished anthropologist, explicitly formulated the ideal:
The critical habit of thought, if usual in a society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators and are never deceived by dithyrambic oratory. They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens. (Folkways, 1906)
Until critical habits of thought pervade our society, however, there will be a tendency for schools as social institutions to transmit the prevailing world view more or less uncritically, to transmit it as reality, not as a picture of reality. Education for critical thinking, then, requires that the school or classroom become a microcosm of a critical society. See didactic instruction, dialogical instruction, intellectual virtues, knowledge.

critical thinking:
1) Disciplined, self-directed thinking which exemplifies the perfections of thinking appropriate to a particular mode or domain of thinking.
2) Thinking that displays mastery of intellectual skills and abilities.
3) The art of thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better: more clear, more accurate, or more defensible. Critical thinking can be distinguished into two forms: "selfish" or "sophistic", on the one hand, and "fairminded", on the other. In thinking critically we use our command of the elements of thinking to adjust our thinking successfully to the logical demands of a type or mode of thinking. See critical person, critical society, critical reading, critical listening, critical writing, perfections of thought, elements of thought, domains of thought, intellectual virtues.

critical writing: To express ourselves in language requires that we arrange our ideas in some relationships to each other. When accuracy and truth are at issue, then we must understand what our thesis is, how we can support it, how we can elaborate it to make it intelligible to others, what objections can be raised to it from other points of view, what the limitations are to our point of view, and so forth. Disciplined writing requires disciplined thinking; disciplined thinking is achieved through disciplined writing. See critical listening, critical reading, logic of language.
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