How not to improve education in America

Molly Worthen, “The anti-college is on the rise,” June 8, 2019,

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to opinion essay by Molly Worthen, “The anti-college is on the rise,” June 8, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/college-anti-college-mainstream-universities.html#commentsContainer&permid=100865338:100865338:

The college and university programs we most need could well be less innovative and more rigorous, but they do need to emphasize thinking, which when well done is rational and imaginative, rigorous and creative.  And they need to at least include strong emphasis on the humanities subjects that are getting defunded or shunted aside.  

For anyone who is paying attention, the personal connection in understanding Plato or Shakespeare goes of itself; if you don't get this, you don't get it at all.  

It does not have to be demonstrated, nor suited up with pedagogical techniques of the kind teachers learn in teacher's education programs and that Americans are so good at putting in the place of critical understanding of the ideas themselves.  

We need nationally to choose to spend money on education; there should not be high tuition supporting bloated management and special programs at the cost of lifetime debt peonage.  

And we need to be clear that an education is for citizenship and the good life, which go together.  And not only job training, subsidizing capital and the economy.    

American collegians enjoy the life of the mind for four years in a refuge from a society that would not think.  Ideas, learning, thinking should concern us all more.