Steven Pinker on Academia Today
Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
It's important for universities to embrace new ideas.
February 5, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
It's important for universities to embrace new ideas.
February 5, 2009 | In Politics & Policy
Original content is for Non-commercial use under Creative Commons. Except where otherwise noted.
Some Rights Reserved. Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Discuss
Mark Prinz on February 5, 2009, 5:43 PM
My view of true academia is of a place that exists solely for the purpose of expanding knowledge. I just don’t see that today, though I admit it may be an overly-idealistic view. But it seems that universities are becoming more interested in marketing ideas rather than sharing them, and there’s an important difference. To the university, your idea is only as good as the amount of grant money it brings in. Whether this is a fault of the university or not is debatable, as I certainly understand the need for the university to make enough money to survive. But ideologically, it seems a shame that expanding our basic understanding of the world we live in takes a back seat to expanding our wallets.
Josh Valdes on February 12, 2009, 3:29 PM
An example of the fallibility of universities is the unwavering assumption that test scores and course performance, the measurable factors that student grades are based on, are an accurate judge of what a student has accomplished in developing their skills. This issue is especially acute for people with ADHD and Dyslexia. It’s an issue of authority and conformity. The university wants its degree to really mean something that’s worth 50-to-100-thousand dollars. To do so, it forces an extreme of intellectual conformity. People with ADHD are natural non-conformists, and therein lies their inability to get good grades. They have the same intelligence distribution as ‘normal’ range people, but they are less able to conform. The conformity requisite is an artifact of the fact that the data that comes out on a transcript, letter grades next to course titles, itself provides very little information. It’s like using the internet as a forum for business cards; you can’t really get a good idea of what’s behind it. I’m creating the Fractal University to mop up the mess in your blindspot.
Lee Bob Black on August 18, 2009, 10:23 AM
Steven Pinker and and George Church on a NOVA scienceNOW segment, Public Genomes; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0406/01.html
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or Register