A Vision of Students Today

Ann Goodale

English 100

Blog Post

2/3/11

In Michael Wesch and his students of KSU, in the video, “A Vision of Students today”, send a message based on a student created survey on themselves about student life today. Students today aren’t learning what they need to learn about real world problems by sitting in a lecture class at a traditional university. What they are learning doesn’t seem to relevant to their lives so a lot of the students were asking the questions, “Why am I even here?” or “Why am I going to spend thousand of dollars on textbooks that I’m never going to open?” The Students in the video were basically saying there needs to be an alternative method to Education then just sitting in classrooms learning nothing for 4-6 hrs a day.

Cookson in his article, “What would Socrates say?” says that there is indeed an alternative method to education. Socrates method of learning addresses “real world” problems and teaches students how to address those problems and how to critically think through a solution. Cookson states, “If we stop thinking of schools as buildings and start thinking of learning as occurring in many different places we will free ourselves from the conventional educational model that still dominates our thinking.”(par 29)

According to the Students in Wesch’s video, a typical student is forced to multitask and juggle classes, homework and jobs. They aren’t being taught how to study, how to take lecture notes or even how to manager time. If a student comes to a smaller campus like a community college then a student can learn how to study etc. I personally attended a traditional university for one semester and came home for financial reasons but during that semester I felt lost academically. It wasn’t until I came to Whatcom Community College where I felt like I could have control over my classes, homework and I was taught how to study. The Socrates Method that Cookson addresses in his article is the solution to the problem in Wesch’s video.