June Wygant
A distinguishing factor of the cohort that my research covers is that at some point they decided to take control of their learning. While they still enjoy the privileges associated with attending an elite university, they recognize the need to take responsibility for their own intellectual growth. An email that I received in response to last week’s post described this self-directed growth mindset: “I’ve definitely learned the value of learning on the margins. Always important to keep an eye out on my intellectual periphery. A lot of times, it’s much more interesting than my coursework.” Self-teaching is not a new concept. Men and women have been doing so since they recognized the need to master their environment or create survival strategies. What makes the self-directed apprentices that I am investigating at Yale so interesting is that in some respects they are considered outliers because of their independent pursuit of knowledge and skills, and their willingness to chart unconventional career paths.
William Deresiewicz, a former Yale English professor and author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite & The Way to a Meaningful Life (2014), argues that an elite education manufactures students who are smart and talented and driven but are “trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.” He continues, “most of them seemed content to color within the lines that their education had marked out for them.” He seems to identify the cohort that I am studying when he makes the following statement: “Very few were passionate about ideas. Very few saw college as part of a large project of intellectual discovery and development, one that they directed by themselves and for themselves.”
Is it possible that I have stumbled upon the path of the “very few” that are “coloring outside the lines”? Or, is it possible that the timeframe of my research (2012 – present) and the context are sufficiently different than the period when Deresiewicz taught at Yale (1998 – 2008)? Is it possible that Yale students now appreciate the need to take control of their own learning and preparation as 21st century knowledge workers? Perhaps my observations are tracking with the ascendancy of an interest in entrepreneurship, innovation and design at Yale, and the build-out of student-oriented infrastructure, such as the Center for Engineering, Innovation and Design and the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, to support these emerging interests.
Just as students are participating in problem-based learning in some classes at Yale, they recognize that ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as they live it. This relatively new approach to teaching and learning helps learners tackle real-world problems to be solved, and not just an abstract problem with no apparent utility. Deresiewicz might take issue with this approach, as he writes in his 2008 essay, “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” “the admissions process increasingly selects kids who have already begun to think of themselves in specialized terms-the junior journalist, the budding astronomer, the language prodigy.” “We are slouching,” he contends, “even at elite schools, toward a glorified form of vocational training.”
While I agree that conformity exists among students at Yale to pursue the same career choices, specifically Wall Street and management consulting, I take issue with Deresiewicz’s cynicism. He observed that “most elite schools have become places of a narrow and suffocating normalcy.” He refers to them as “excellent sheep” because they are following a well-worn path prescribed for them by society. Nonetheless, since Deresiewicz taught at Yale real world events have intervened in the lives of today’s students. The Great Recession, and its aftermath, has presented them with a new normal; a new reality, one in which they need to, in the words of Steve Jobs, “Think different.” This approach is no longer an optional one. Taking the “safe route” to Wall Street is no longer so safe. Today for some students pursuing entrepreneurship is perceived as a realistic possibility because the façade of job security in mainstream careers has been crumbling.
Given the fact that technology is spawning a new relationship between learners and teachers, students are empowered to control their own futures. Administrators and faculty are quietly negotiating how to improve teaching at a research university, even though there is little incentive to be a good teacher. Meanwhile, the cohort that is the focus of my research seems to be saying that whatever may improve teaching matters little because what they really want is the ability to tap into university resources outside of the traditional classroom to facilitate their self-directed learning.
We live in a world where, in my opinion, “learning on the margins,” and “coloring outside the lines” are adaptive strategies for being successful in a rapidly changing environment that necessitates new behaviors and a new self-directed learning mindset.