Education and Success in Real-life
At the heart of every serious criticism of formal education-including chemical education-is the question of how to design a student's academic experiences so as t o improve the quality of his attainments in real-life. Debates on this difficult hut ever-morevital question swirl around several centers of thought, all of which converge to the single idea of how to help the student acquire the intellectual and emotional tools needed to grasp the essentials of a given situation and to respond appropriately to it. Just what these indispemable, intellectual and emotional tools are, how one uses them to grasp the essentials of a situation, and how and where one acquires the experience and judgment to r e spond appropriately once he grasps the essentials, are, for the most part, unanswered questions, around which the great controversies of contemporary education revolve. There is, first of all, the argument over whether the primary aim of education is t o develop people or to develop talent, and if, indeed, there is a difference. Protagonists range in view from an attitude of "teach the best and shoot the rest" to one of "shame the best and hedonize the rest." The central issue here is whether it is wiser in the cmnch to sacrifice intellectual discipline for personality development or vice versa; and whether, having made such a decision one way or the other, a reasonable balance can be reestablished. The issue is not necessarily one of high versus low academic standards. Rather, it is one of establishing priorities and strategies for assuring both learning and growth in learning, and for nurturing important intellectual values such as curiosity, persistence, and the urge to use what one has learned. All but the extremists in this argument recognize that each individual is a psychological whole, and that to reach his full potential both his intellectual and emotional talents and abilities must be developed. That this development could take the advanced form i t has in t'he great numbers of people in this society is in itself a near miracle, especially when viewed in light of our meager knowledge of this phenomenon. Therefore, before eating one another alive on thisissue, and possibly destroying much of what is good in our educational system, we might be wise to assess what education has made available to each of us (and what it undoubtedly will offer our students) by way of opportunities for improving the quality of our attainments-opportunities that either were not available or were available in much more limited numbers to preceding generations. Perhaps
( editorially speaking then we can proceed more intelligently toward our goal of redesigning education so students can live more productive lives. A second major educational controversy swirls around what can be described as the trained intelligence polemic. Here the battle rages over what is called "training" as contrasted with what is called "education," and with the relative merits of providing students with technical or cognitive skills dircctly related to jobs and advancement in existing institutions or hierarchies, as contrasted with educational experiences which develop the student's creative talents and his ability to look beyond the application of codefied procedures for codefied situations, and toward more original or novel models. The extremes here are the advocates of the super-specialist (how else could we have reached the moon) philosophy on the one hand, and those of the undisciplined dilettante (how else can we outwit technology and remain free men) doctrine, on the other. They range from the talented individual so overburdened by knowledge and methodology in a narrow area that he is unable either intellectually or emotionally to show enough disrespect for tradition or for the models he uses to be truly creative, to the brilliant idealist so obsessed with the power of ideas and the exhilaration of innovation t,hat he is unable by knowledge or by temperament to distinguish an inspired response from one that is simply far-fetched. Obviously, individuals reared according to either of these philosophies are crippled, with little chance of performing a t their true potential. There arc implications in all this for chemistry faculties everywhere. At all levels in higher education the crunch is on, and we need to respond with wisdom, strength, and conviction. Much that Tve are doing is definitely in the right dircction. Nonctheless, there is need to examine critically, and in the light of today's demands and today's student needs, where we are heading. Perhaps we need to aslc whether we will develop people, or talcnt, or talented people; whether we will hold on to what is eminently good, or yield to the pressures of hedonism; whether we will train specialists or educate scientists; whether we will produce cripples or graduate knowledgeable creators; whether we will grasp the essent,ials of this situation and respond appropriately to it, or pretend there is no problem and hope it disappears. In a word, it is a questionof the quality of each individual's real-life attainmcnts, and how his education defines and tempers not only what he accomplishes, but WTL what is accomplished by all.
Volume 49, Number 4, April 1972
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