Meet the EduPunks: Radical Self-educators Start a Movement

http://www.utne.com/Politics/Meet-the-EduPunks-Radical-Self-Education.aspx?utm_content=07.30.10+Spirituality&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

A note on this article:
Can we expect students to be proactive in their education if they
cannot access the very professors they are supposed to he learning
from and working with?

Grasping a knowledge base and theoretical foundation on a subject is
typically simple enough that it can be done in a variety of
environments, but anything beyond the basic elements of a topic should
not be restricted to the bare bone walls of a traditional lecture
hall, especially if students are to grasp a holistic and functional
understanding of an issue or topic. By breaking down the restrictive
barriers and confinement of a textbook we can grasp a more broad scale
view of something and begin to tie in topics that traditionally may
not have been introduced. The impact of this is to extend an
understanding far beyond an institutionalized, intellectual grasp and
brig it well into the realm of clarity and allow for greater creative
input into developing ideas.

So often in the classroom I've listened to students make suggestions
or recommendations towards solutions to issues. While the suggestions
may bring about new questions and a good point, typically the
suggestions are based solely on information that has been presented
and are of a narrow scope. Quite often, the response to the suggestion
was scheduled to follow shortly after in the professor's planned
lecture; typically with a response along the lines of, 'as you'll see
in my next slide...' This seems to clearly represent the narrow range
of issues that are discussed in traditional classrooms and it
perpetuates a student's lack of initiative to question things or think
about an issue as a whole and the associated issues that may be
related.

Were students encouraged to seek out the associated impacts of issues
and attain the system wide understanding of something I believe that
we would see solutions to issues emerge much more rapidly and be more
robust and long lasting than that haphazard, duct tape responses we
fond so often. Maybe we would dedicate the time necessary to explore
the root problems that are submerged under various layers of static
baggage attached to issues. I also believe that stronger leaders would
emerge out of these suggested changes to our education system. A
stronger community with an interconnected learning circle between
faculty, student and professors where information is not projected
down from the podium, but rather encircled between all parties.
Professors would provide structure and guidance while accepting the
knowledge and input from their younger peers.