Eng portfolio entry no. 2

Original Article: As Harvard goes

March 5 2007, from the Time print edition.

This article basically reports changes to Harvard’s curriculum and briefly discusses their effect.

What is the purpose of education? The traditionalist will promptly respond that its aims to maximise the potential of every student. However, there is another oft-hidden angle of the purpose of education—to endow every student with the skills he/she needs to survive in the real world, as well as to better the world around them.

It is because of this that America’s most famous university will be establishing eight primary subject areas that all students will have to take, encompassing subjects like anthropology and social relations; Ethical Reasoning; and sociology and economics.

A very interesting side to this approach is, I believe, the element of active learning, where the information is not merely absorbed by the student from an inert, uninteractive medium like the book, but where the student is encouraged to experience what he/she has learnt in motion in the real world. There are a few differences between the results of learning from a textbook and learning actively. But the primary reason is this—when an event or a concept is compressed into words, these is only so much that can be put across, and it is very easy for there to be misunderstanding of information, for information to be irrevocably lost. To see the concept in action, however, is something very different, as then the concept is seen in its actual entirety—it is not sieved through another medium where chance of error surfaces, when the dangerous possibility of the information becoming meretricious brummagem hangs precariously on the writers' aptitude in elucidation. Also, it is important to note that visual and kinesthetic impact play a large role in the long-term internalization of the information.

Also, I think that this approach to learning ensures better understanding of what is learned by introducing application to the real world, which leads to a better and more in-depth perception of a particular concept. It is utterly useless for a person to have memorized an entire textbook but lack the ability to effectively use the information gathered from the textbook to solve problems in the real world—that approach renders the studying of the sciences null and void, as it they loses their relevance to the real world. Learning for learning’s sake is useless, as knowing does not truly matter, but how that information is applied greatly does. Just as one does not become a marathon runner from reading about the Boston Marathon, so one does not become a good problem solver by listening to lectures. That is why hands-on work is needed; it pre-empts real-life problems, and ensures that the student, when he exits college and faces the wider world, does not do so with nothing but knowledge of what should happen but not what to do to ensure that it does.

The only thing that is believe is very wrong with this system is the fact that it excludes history. Given that fact that this system places a lot of emphasis on logic and philosophy, it is paradoxical why history should be excluded, as many of the logical premises which lead to leader’s wise decisions in response to current situations really stem from observations of what happened in a similar framework in the past.

Despite this system's shortcomings, which, I acknowledge, are present in all education systems, the system soon to be employed in Harvard promises much, because when all is said and done, everything boils down to one deceptively (and, very sadly, often-ignored)simple principle that nonetheless has profound resonances within the arena of education--that science, as much as literature and every other subject worth teaching and learning, should be used--for humanity.

499 words.