The Irony of Higher Education in United States Society

Having recently joined the higher education community, I am beginning to notice certain problems with high education through my own personal experience. Student contributions in the classroom are not only on a decline as a result of students not participating, but are also a cause of the restrictions placed on students by professors. It has become disrespectful or deviant to challenge or question a professor's line of thinking or even the logic of their favorite thinker. Perhaps, student contribution has become rebellious and controversial for the sake of controversy or due to a lack of intellectual thinking, but a more likely view on this trend is the likelihood that a habituation has occurred where students have become docile in contributing and accepting professor's information as axioms and furthermore, the professors, themselves, have accepted the information they present as absolute. I wish to share with you my personal classroom experience within the last year to further develop this idea.

The classroom layout may be a large contributing factor to the higher education being in decline. In nearly all classes, a lecture setting has been established. There is one focal point - the lecturer and the material presented. It is a formal setting meant to mass produce students of the same mold. The lecture halls have become caverns of habituation and brainwashing. Looking at the concept of a lecture, there is one speaker and a room full of note-takers intent on every word spat worrying if this topic is on the midterm. The concept in itself encourages an authoritarian/submissive relationship between student and teacher. It is a one-way street of superiority. We have placed one thinker on a pedestal - or behind a lectern - and focus endlessly on one perspective and interpretation of history, literature, art, philosophy, English, history, or any other subject presented. How is this format problematic?

This relationship between student and teacher creates several problems. The first problem created by this relationship is the inability of students to grow into critical and analytic thinkers. It is a process of digestion. The students absorb information, digestion, and live according to this information without ever questioning why this is the way to exist. By doing this we create the next problem with is to perpetuate this relationship. As teachers retire, grow old, and die, there is but one way for new teachers to submit information to students which is the same broken cycle they experienced as students. The former students take the same unquestioned information provided and present it to new students in the same format as their teachers. The cycle of habituation is continued by students. Furthermore, if misinformation is provided (which does happen; believe me, I've been through it), we continue in a cycle where bad information is reused.

Considering the dangers of lecture driven classrooms, I encourage all students to discuss! Interact. Throw your opinion out there. Take the information and question it. Create your own interpretation based on fact not on a professor's opinion or thought.

Alex Smith.