When we were young students, we often remarked to our teachers: "This subject is useless to me. When am I ever going to use this knowledge in the real world?" Teachers everywhere cringe at this comment. Today, many people are questioning the value of higher education as a whole. Schools are scrambling to demonstrate their graduates' return on investment. Institutions should be focused on helping students prepare for a successful career. Developing practical skills and capabilities is important. Yet, the value of higher education extends well beyond learning concrete skills that are easily transferable to the first job after graduation.
As a faculty member, I believe that I'm helping to form the whole person, to contribute to the personal development of young people. As part of that formation, I believe that I'm responsible for shaping the minds of my students, not by teaching them what to think, but how to think. We sharpen their minds not by giving them all the answers, but asking tough questions. We push them, challenge them, and ask them to do something perhaps they did not think they could accomplish. Sometimes, it means making them uncomfortable.
Employers need to be focused on understanding the quality of the minds they hire, not just the batch of immediately applicable skills that person brings to the table. By that, I don't mean focusing on GPA or test scores alone. I mean that employers need to assess how applicants think through tough problems. How do they frame an issue, explore alternatives, analyze ambiguous data, and draw conclusions backed by strong supporting logic?
As I think about these issues at the end of this academic year, I'm reminded of one of my favorite movie scenes about teaching and education. The movie is The Paper Chase, starring John Houseman as a professor teaching first-year students at Harvard Law School. He offers a beautiful soliloquy about his approach to teaching during an early scene in the movie. My favorite quote: "We do brain surgery here. You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer."
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