Category Archives: Higher Education

The Best Doctors. Lawyers, and Educators

Posted on January 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

Apologies if the title implies another top 10 list, since the intention was to comment about what makes the best doctors, lawyers, and educators. I’m honored to see medical doctors practicing in underdeveloped countries, helping the sick, instead of scheduling dates in opulent offices reached by appointment only.

They’re the best doctors: bringing medicine to the sick. Same with lawyers, when they offer legal advice or represent a client ‘for the good’ of the profession and legal system. But what makes the best educators? In the case of medical doctors, how good would they be, if they only cared for the healthy; the same with lawyers, if their only clients were those who knew the law well.

It follows that the best educators are those who provide education to the ones who need it. I caution to say uneducated, because unlike the sick or poorly represented, being uneducated assumes that a ‘fully’ educated exists.

It is probably this point, among others, that distinguishes the three professions. While medical doctors can make us healthier, if a patient dies, the doctor doesn’t die too. If the client is sentenced to jail, the lawyer doesn’t serve the same sentence. But if the learner fails, the educator fails as well.  Not just because of poor practices, doctors and lawyers can do that also, but in preparing learners to become the teachers of educators now and continuing.

In a way, the best educators are investors with a portfolio of healthy, law-abiding, and troubled assets; from grade school to retirement home;  rural and urban, and having scheduled appointments or not.

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Posted in Higher Education, K-12 Education, Reform & Improvement, Teacher Development

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State of Continuing Education 2012

Posted on January 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

Presenting the ‘State of Continuing Education’ comes with at least two outdated and conflicting terms. Some changes have occurred, but many have not. We have been hopeful and disappointed, gone through set-backs and have led the way.

We see Education has taken many forms and have been used for different purposes. The challenge going forward will involve defining the education you need among multiple options. Some are costly, many are cheaper, a few are unnecessary, but all of them will teach.

Learning has also come into fashion, which makes it harder to determine its real impact. The shift has turned away from learning individually to learning as a group, with a community, or in a society.

It appears that problems will define what we decide to learn, instead of also curiosity. Although both are needed, the expectations for education and learning to provide solutions and credentials on a timeline, within a budget, for a job and trying to keep one, are trending increasingly higher.

What is getting better and expanding is that education is not just k-12, but throughout a lifetime.  What will be interesting to see is whether adults will capture all of their grade-school experiences, good and bad, and return back to these schools and improve them: Wouldn’t that be continuing education?

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Posted in Adult Learning, Higher Education, K-12 Education, Reform & Improvement, State of Continuing Education

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Is ‘Learning’ for a Reason, Season, or Lifetime?

Posted on September 15, 2011 | 1 Comment

A quick answer: Yes! Although this response depends on what ‘learning’ means for different people. Learning how to read, for instance, could mean something different from learning how to rap, text, or even write a blog. With countless examples like these, people can come up with all kinds of reasons for learning.

Same goes for the seasons for learning. They are timeframes that could range from months in a year, years of age, or an age and era representing the sign-of-the-times. It would follow that a lifetime for learning includes learning that never ends and continues throughout every stage of living.

So why the question? Well, simply to highlight the power of choices, but the limitations that comes with decisions. The question, “is learning for a reason, season, or lifetime” can suggest a selection that must be made between them. If made, at that very moment, learning is limited by that decision. In fact, learning is even limited by posing a question with only three options.

So I leave you with a thought: What would learning be without limitations?  Imagine if we never had to make up reasons for learning, such as having to wait next Fall to start school,  or planning for milestone ages of 30, 40, and 50-years-old as new opportunities to learn more.  

If learning was limitless and without these options, what would you choose?        

 

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Posted in Adult Learning, Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, Uncategorized

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Engaged-Learning: Linking Education to Everyone

Posted on June 2, 2011 | 3 Comments

What do you think? Should education be a right or a privilege?

To be fair, I’m mostly talking about education beyond high-school or even college. But with rising costs of tuition, the inconvenience of attending, or the enormous time pursuing,  it offers us this kind of choice of going back-to-school or continuing as already predetermined.

In this way, education is a privilege afforded by those who either have the money (or worse, student loans), the time (balancing work, school, and life responsibilities), or convenience (or at least managing it).

But what if education was a right?

Where institutions of higher learning would provide free and low-cost continuing education; where employers would give money and sabbatical time for renewing and gaining skills; where society would embrace lifelong learning and education, as learning for-its-own-sake, to become more informed and enlightened citizens of communities.

This is what engaged-learning could be—and should be: Linking education for everyone at all stages of life and learning.

So, returning to the question: Should education be a right or a privilege? Or better, should we never have to answer this question because someday we will experience no difference.

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Posted in Community Engagement, Engaged-Learning, Higher Education, K-12 Education, Reform & Improvement, Uncategorized

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Student-Athlete or Semi-Pro: Care to know the difference?

Posted on March 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of the joys in sports are the college games: Basketball, football, baseball, even track and others are examples of young adults, in their twenties, dazzling audiences in the bleachers, at home, or on car-stereo. 

As they entertain, do we ever think about whether one has a mid-term tomorrow, a paper to finish, or chapters to read before next lecture; become a politician, philosopher or doctor;  Do we even care to know? I mean, no one turns on the tv to see our up-and-coming college star got a B in Art Appreciation, C in Physics, and an A in Consumer Economics.  What we care to know is how many points are scored, records broken, or witnessing potential athletic greatness unfolding.

So why do some get uptight when the term ‘student athlete’ is replaced with ‘semi-professional,’ describing the kind of condition some collegians are facing—interning for entering a draft.  

It’s not clear exactly who should be called student athlete or semi-pro. What’s the difference: Money, endorsements, media coverage?  Rules state that these collegians cannot benefit or received those directly anyway.  And why not?

Experiences and lessons-learned also exist outside classrooms, schools, or colleges.  Some have learned perhaps that most sobering and troubling lesson from their fans.  That what they ‘do and show’ mean more to many than what they think and know.

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Posted in Costs & Loans, Higher Education, Training & Development, Uncategorized

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