Pedagogy

They call it a “long read”.  I shouldn’t be surprised anymore that we need to warn people to brace themselves, the idea or position piquing interest might take a while to ingest. Where has our patience gone?  Doesn’t anything worthwhile take some time?

On this particular morning I welcome a long read, especially one that has me waxing nostalgic about the years I thrived on a college campus.  When I think back about my time away at school, I need to dig deep for anything other than rich, positive memories.  It’s like dopamine floods my brain, hearts and flowers float out of my mouth, and a goofy, ethereal smile of pleasure spreads across my face.Those were good times.

I’ve always felt that the act of going away to school is a rite of passage all young people should partake in.  The experience can be viewed as a homogenous enclave, this microcosm where everyone is roughly the same age, there for roughly the same reasons, but it’s also the place where many of us got our first taste of true diversity, where we were agape at the idea that being different and expressing yourself was not only welcomed, but expected. At least this was the case for me back in the 80’s. The college campus opened my eyes to the world.

Is it different for our kids today?  Has their steady diet of streaming social media and radical reality TV sated any appetite for alternative ideas or opinions?  The perspective The Atlantic brings me in this morning's long read is worrisome.  The culture at college campuses seems to be shifting from free expression to overprotection.   A pattern of slow suffocation is emerging in the free speech both students and faculty take for granted.  It threatens to raze the teaching of critical thinking the freedom to express an extreme opinion provides.

 

The traditional college experience is a fruitful collision of the nascent exposure to radicalism and the blossoming of critical thinking.  It’s access to diverse perspective at a time when young minds are ripe to analyze it. Are we sending jaded kids to school now who have seen so much, been sheltered so fiercely, they’ve become closed to new ideas before ever really being opened up?

College is about the free exchange of ideas, talking about what’s taboo, a safe place to test the waters, to be a little out there.  In this space professors and fellow students ask questions of us; we ask questions of ourselves.  We’re allowed to place an idea on the table and study it, absent of an emotional reaction, to talk about it without fear of retribution.  This is the path to learning how to think critically, to put our feelings to the side and make objective assessments that become the foundation for solid leadership; leadership of others and more importantly, of ourselves.

I want my kids to experience this kind of learning.

 

And so this morning I think maybe I need to market the college experience to my boys in a new language, one they understand, covet and embrace.  College isn’t about sitting at a desk, following the status quo, with all the boundaries many young people find so distasteful about high school.  It’s about questions, experimentation, range and lively debate; a resuscitation of the creative thinking they’ve begrudgingly forced into dormancy.

If we’re going to discover and free who it is we are meant to be, we need to be allowed to think beyond who others say we should be. This is the long read worth making time for.

For more on The Atlantic’s perspective, read here.

You’ll need at least 20 minutes.