Letters on online education, Trump
Are education and ‘skill sets’ the same?
Wichita State University administrators reported their success in offering more online courses than most other Kansas institutions, giving students access to “skill sets” and leading to “badges ” (Dec. 26 Opinion). Are education and “skill sets” the same thing?
Guys like Socrates thought that education was about asking questions, while guys like Confucius thought that education was about passing on the wisdom of the ages. John Dewey and his colleagues thought that “we learn to do by doing,” and many Native Americans see education as learning to listen to the voices of nature.
If you want to know how to fix engines or use computers, or manufacture solar panels, those are “skill sets” of the sort that used to be learned in vocational or business colleges. “Education” requires the consideration of the role engines and computers play in life, or the consequences of not putting solar panels on the “innovation” center at WSU.
Given that all knowledge is complexly related to the whole, what skill sets can, or cannot, be acquired online for “badges”?
We are rapidly losing our public institutions to “the private sector.” They are seeking to carry out private agendas rather than the public mission of learning to ponder, perhaps poetically, what we must know and consider in order to pursue education.
Jim Phillips and Dorothy Billings, Wichita
Great for whom?
“Sustained low oil prices have strained the economy and forced questions about whether the (royal) family – with thousands of members and still growing – can simultaneously maintain its lavish lifestyle and its unchallenged grip on the country.”
The previous quote was from a New York Times article about Saudi Arabia. I read it twice and began to see a close similarity between Saudi Arabia and what is happening here in America.
With the incoming administration and the appointments to his cabinet, it sounds as if we are in for an American-style story of the rich and famous. I still pray fervently that Congress will prove to be up to the challenge of defending the common man who reportedly voted Donald Trump into office.
Make America great again, but for whom?
Clyde Vasey, Winfield
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This story was originally published December 30, 2016 at 5:03 AM with the headline "Letters on online education, Trump."