Alienating Our Students

“If you were an alien from another planet visiting Earth and you asked yourself what public education here is for, you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output -- who really succeeds, who does everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners -- that its whole purpose, throughout the world, is to produce university professors. . . . [W]e shouldn't hold them up as the exemplars of all human achievement. They're just a form of life. But they're rather curious. . . . Typically, they live in their heads. They live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, in a kind of literal way.” ~Ken Robinson

I am unsure if you have encountered any lopsided professors in your studies at The University of Memphis or in your primary or secondary education, but I am frightened by the thought that these individuals—and our drive to produce more of them—are scaring away perfectly normal and quite brilliant students.

In Memphis, there are 9,000 individuals between the ages of 18 and 24 who are not enrolled in school, not employed, and have not finished college. Have we alienated these individuals by the somewhat alien-like approaches to which we cling in education? More specifically, has our focus on the development of academic skills so separated students from their passions and has our emphasis on following the rules so stifled creativity that students are disenfranchised and disengaged because they do not see the relevancy of education to their lives?

Students have an easier time asking instructors for directions and a harder time identifying any genuine direction for their lives. Yet, they are intelligent, and their brilliance is essential to our success as a community both locally and globally. If they do not have the ability to understand themselves and their passions, the degree definitely does not signify an education.

Regularly, I hear students tell me all of the activities that they cannot do. However, I wish that we could nurture students who were aware of their talents and potential and who feel valued for the contributions that they can make in the classroom and in the world because of the classroom…contributions that go beyond lopsided, disembodied professors unless, of course, that is their goal.