Learning

The problem with learning these days is that there is insufficient antagonism. Each student I meet seems to be the protagonist of a private drama. We have pussyfooted around so much that it is hard to move them away from their solipsistic lotus-dreams. In some cases, they seem less like lotus-dreams, though, than bad trips.

Whatever it is, I think more students would do better if they had constant rigorous antagonists. I suppose that a teacher could do the job, but only if that teacher were consistent, kind, and genuinely interested in being a creative and productive antagonist.

Why do I think so? I think that just as a drama with an unopposed protagonist is flat, or even one-dimensional, so too are the learning lives of students without someone to challenge them where it is needed and warranted. In order for constructs of depth to be created, somebody has to create the orthogonal and shift these self-involved people out of their ruts.

The problem is not confined to this generation; we were like that too. The difference is that now the rut-digging apparatus is more complex, ubiquitous, attractive. The whole 'cheap information network' idea has made people contributors and digesters of facts and information-bites, but not of knowledge and theory.

Or so I think.