What Studying A College Can Teach Us

Bowdoin College, an elite university located in Maine that has an acceptance rate of only 16% of its applicants, has recently found itself the nexus of a massive influx of controversy.

…And it’s all because its president talked down the wrong person.

The pre-bought face-off came in the form of a friendly game of golf between Bowdoin's President Barry Mills and a philanthropist/investor named Thomas Klingenstein, though it is unclear precisely how heated the driver wielding dialogue got, it evidently distressed Mills enough that he delivered the first real swing when he decided to mention a particularly unpleasant golfing partner who’d interrupted his backswing to spout racist platitudes.

Shockingly, Klingenstein found this response galling. As part of his repose and counter punch, Klingenstein decided to commission researchers to do an academic report on Bowdoin’s culture, both academically and on campus, to see just what the college was teaching its students. The result was a 355 page report by the group National Association of Scholars that systematically broke down Bowdoin’s entire culture and worldview with extreme candor.

Plenty of information and insight can be gleaned from this reports, from bizarre and horribly slanted seminars to op-eds written by the school presidents suggesting how students should vote in elections. Reading through the report makes one thing pretty apparent. Academics at this school is about lecturing, not engaging.

Shock and horror about this report will be on display in the conservative circles, and plenty of dismissals will occur on the opposing side. The irony that some people will undoubtedly use this as a reason to attack their political foes is not lost on me. Also, the fact that I'm writing an opinion piece on this whole topic makes me chuckle a little. But, what is the typical person who didn't go to this school, or, such as myself, someone who went to a different school that had some, but not overwhelming biases, take from this story? My take is that discourse in school is threatened.

Society is becoming polarized, duh, so it only makes sense that some of that spill over into our education system. Perhaps that is even the source of some of our public discourse. I'm sure a great essay could be written about the man who learned everything about life from school having a conversation about the man who learned everything about life from church, perhaps another day. For now, I'm stating that the education is becoming defined as the imparting of knowledge. That sounds reasonable, right? Keep reading.

Take a moment, close your eyes, and picture the perfect college lecture setting. Is the professor behind a podium going on and on about a topic, fielding few if any questions, laughing at his own jokes about dissenters and how foolish they are? I hope not, I've had classes like that, I referred to them as snooze times. Or, do you see a professor walking out in front of their podium, asking an open-ended question, waiting for a response, then engaging and challenging a student? Playing the eternal protagonist to whatever position is brought up first, until another student assumes that role and the professor can become little more than a moderator, infusing facts into the conversation and making sure it stays on topic and civil. I've had classes like that as well, luckily I was well rested for them.

In a time where opinions are everywhere and facts fall to the wayside, the true charge of a college isn't to spill knowledge into one's brain, we have Google for that, it's not to make a student to absorb an abundance of perspective, we have Fox News and MSNBC for that. The challenge for our colleges, and our education system as a whole is to get our young people to think for themselves. The definition of education is, and should always be, learning how to learn.