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2 comments - Last on 11/04/2009

"An Unsuccessful Education Can Ruin You"

October 30, 2009 By Ashley Thorne

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article, "Course Reminds Budding Ph.D.'s of the Damage They Can Do," about a seminar taught at the CUNY Graduate Center on the ethics of teaching. Steven M. Cahn teaches the class, and he seeks to dispel the notion that all education is innocuous:

"People often think that education works either to improve you or to leave you as you were," Mr. Cahn says. "But that's not right. An unsuccessful education can ruin you. It can kill your interest in a topic. It can make you a less-good thinker. It can leave you less open to rational argument. So we do good and bad as teachers—it's not just good or nothing."

Cahn discusses with his small class the meaning of academic freedom ("How free should instructors be to proclaim their beliefs in the classroom? And how sensitive should they be to their students' personal commitments?") and the question of university neutrality ("Do colleges have an institutional duty to stay out of certain public debates? Or is that kind of neutrality actually undesirable or impossible?"). His students enjoy tackling these issues; as future professors, the subjects they consider in Cahn's seminar will soon become very real for them.

This course covers the very same fundamental higher education debates in which the National Association of Scholars has found a voice for the last twenty-two years. These are conversations well worth having - they ponder "What does it mean to be a university of integrity?" The existence of the CUNY seminar is encouraging. Now if only all faculty members and administrators took this course, perhaps we'd have a better foundation for teaching the next generation.

Add a Comment

"But that's not right. An unsuccessful education can ruin you. It can kill your interest in a topic.

Forget killing your interest, an unsuccessful education can kill you outright!

I have personally intervened in multiple situations where faculty/student interactions, inside the classroom and outside it, have pushed students to the very brink of suicide. There is a way to deal with such situations, and I am not getting into that, but with personal knowledge of the situations I know that what a faculty member(s) did either pushed the kid over the edge or caused the problem outright. And while these faculty hide behind "academic freedom" and lifetime tenure, any other professional (lawyer, doctor, social worker, high school teacher) would loose his or her license for this sort of stuff.

by Ed Posted on 11/03/2009

It seems to me that a good many colleges and universities have forgotten the point of education to begin with, to pursue knowledge and truth. Instead of pursuing this ultimate objective, they have taken it upon themselves to use their forum to promote whatever cause or political agenda they subscribe to. It's time to get back to real education, and not this relativistic fluff that is passed off as learning.

by Home School College Counselor Posted on 11/04/2009

↑ back to the top

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"An Unsuccessful Education Can Ruin You"
October 30, 2009 By Ashley Thorne
A CUNY graduate professor teaches education ethics; his students discuss the meaning of academic freedom and the question of university neutrality. Now if only all faculty members and administrators took this course...
2 comments - Last on 11/04/2009

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