<i>require every student to complete a “reflective essay on their learning”</i>
The thing is, the end of the term is the worst possible time to write such an essay anyway — not only are the students feeling stressed about their exam results, which does not put them in a reflective frame of mind, it would have added an additional item that (I personally as a student) would have classified as "oh, yet another bullshit required thing."
If there's ever a time for reflecting on what you've learned in college, it's probably 20 years afterwards, when you have some kind of perspective.
Somebody (or several somebodies) clearly went to a workshop at which the praises of reflective writing were sung, and as a result they were pushing that as a skill to be cultivated. I'm a little dubious about the general utility of this for people who will not, in fact, be pitching a memoir to a publisher in the near future, but it was definitely a hot topic at some point.
I'd be very interested in the gender breakdown of the readership for these kinds of books. It's striking how underrepresented "external world non-fiction" is here when it seems to be the kind of book men tend to gravitate to.
I'm enough of an academic freedom absolutist that I chafe over just about any curricular discussion that is going to tell faculty what they have to do in their classes. But this one seems especially noxious inasmuch as I have no idea what legitimate goal it accomplishes or what objective it serves except to justify "curricular design meetings outside of their specific major" for the sort of people who think "curricular design meetings outside of their specific major" are a positive good. These are the same folks who have decided that grades are not a good measure of how students learn but that "assessments" are and who are helping lead to the ruination of higher ed.
Yeah, that's my big gripe with the program we eventually adopted: it requires specific topical coverage for a course to count as covering a subject area, and it takes a bit of effort to put that into, say, introductory Newtonian physics. Which adds to the logistical headache for chairs, who need to not just offer some number of seats, but some number of seats that meet more detailed requirements. It's very irritating and encourages check-the-box course selection by students rather than the open exploration we say we want them to do.
Maybe the students should be encouraged to write themselves such an essay in the first weeks of September, reflecting on their previous year. And by "themselves" I mean a bit of ungraded or even un-turned in writing. The goal would be to help them take stock in how they are doing and what they could be doing to take better advantage of their short time in an expensive school. Would they all do this if it is not turned in? Of course not. But maybe some would.
I do think that this mode works best in a form more like a diary or a blog, where the writing is in some sense its own reward. A few people will find it rewarding and continue on their own (he says, twenty-plus years into running blogs of various sorts), while most will drop it the minute it's not being formally required. And I think that would be fine, but it's hard to build "Give this a shot, why don't you?" into a curriculum...
I quite agree. Our culture seems to have become extremely narcissistic, even decadent. And humans have always been voyeurs. Along with the narcissism and voyeurism, exactly as you point out, a loss of connection to physical reality (the decadent part of the equation).
<i>require every student to complete a “reflective essay on their learning”</i>
The thing is, the end of the term is the worst possible time to write such an essay anyway — not only are the students feeling stressed about their exam results, which does not put them in a reflective frame of mind, it would have added an additional item that (I personally as a student) would have classified as "oh, yet another bullshit required thing."
If there's ever a time for reflecting on what you've learned in college, it's probably 20 years afterwards, when you have some kind of perspective.
Somebody (or several somebodies) clearly went to a workshop at which the praises of reflective writing were sung, and as a result they were pushing that as a skill to be cultivated. I'm a little dubious about the general utility of this for people who will not, in fact, be pitching a memoir to a publisher in the near future, but it was definitely a hot topic at some point.
I'd be very interested in the gender breakdown of the readership for these kinds of books. It's striking how underrepresented "external world non-fiction" is here when it seems to be the kind of book men tend to gravitate to.
Even when it’s a book of reflection, the reflection is usually structured around something manly, like a dog sled race or addiction.
I'm enough of an academic freedom absolutist that I chafe over just about any curricular discussion that is going to tell faculty what they have to do in their classes. But this one seems especially noxious inasmuch as I have no idea what legitimate goal it accomplishes or what objective it serves except to justify "curricular design meetings outside of their specific major" for the sort of people who think "curricular design meetings outside of their specific major" are a positive good. These are the same folks who have decided that grades are not a good measure of how students learn but that "assessments" are and who are helping lead to the ruination of higher ed.
Yeah, that's my big gripe with the program we eventually adopted: it requires specific topical coverage for a course to count as covering a subject area, and it takes a bit of effort to put that into, say, introductory Newtonian physics. Which adds to the logistical headache for chairs, who need to not just offer some number of seats, but some number of seats that meet more detailed requirements. It's very irritating and encourages check-the-box course selection by students rather than the open exploration we say we want them to do.
This kind of self-reflective essay is torture for many people, who barely managed to do it once for college admissions.
Maybe the students should be encouraged to write themselves such an essay in the first weeks of September, reflecting on their previous year. And by "themselves" I mean a bit of ungraded or even un-turned in writing. The goal would be to help them take stock in how they are doing and what they could be doing to take better advantage of their short time in an expensive school. Would they all do this if it is not turned in? Of course not. But maybe some would.
I do think that this mode works best in a form more like a diary or a blog, where the writing is in some sense its own reward. A few people will find it rewarding and continue on their own (he says, twenty-plus years into running blogs of various sorts), while most will drop it the minute it's not being formally required. And I think that would be fine, but it's hard to build "Give this a shot, why don't you?" into a curriculum...
I quite agree. Our culture seems to have become extremely narcissistic, even decadent. And humans have always been voyeurs. Along with the narcissism and voyeurism, exactly as you point out, a loss of connection to physical reality (the decadent part of the equation).