Note: This column originally appeared in The Philadelphia Bulletin.
In examining the successes and failures of higher education, too rarely do we acknowledge the important role of students themselves in the learning process.
In fact, much of the academic elite who dominate the ivy tower today tend to treat incoming students not as young men and women ready for a serious education, but as impressionable children in need of attitude formation and behavior modification.
In searching for a solution to remedy what ails our modern university system, though, we must look to broad ranging solutions that will do more than bring about short-term policy change or committee reviews of college policy.
Rather, we must reform ourselves, changing our own hearts and expanding our imaginations, in order that we might achieve real reform. Our view of young people requires an almost complete re-examination before we can hope to renew higher education.
Young people love to compete. They strive for the opportunity to prove their talent and test their limits. Imagination, exploration and energy are natural virtues for the young at the dawn of their lives.
Yet our culture is mired in a devastating stasis whose conventional wisdom tells the old that the young should, primarily, be shielded for their own developmental good and mental health from real world struggles and joys, miseries and miracles of life.
They're only 12 ... 15 .... 17, we tell ourselves. Too young for serious things, these teenagers. (This, oddly, despite that the term "teenager" only formally entered our lexicon early in the last century.)
In effect, we are teaching our young people to remain, mentally, as children. This stretching out and prolonging of adolescence occurs through the college years. When people talk about "the college experience," how much of that is meant to emphasize learning and adult formation rather than alcohol, sex and drugs?
The problem, boiled down, is thus: our systems of public education, from kindergarten to college graduation, are enforcing and expanding a system that promotes perpetual adolescence.
As a result, the likelihood of our remaining atop the list of advanced civilized nations with citizens well equipped to protect and defend their individual liberty - or to even understand the concept of human rights and intrinsic freedoms - is greatly diminished.
Newt Gingrich, general chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, believes that our quandary calls for a fundamental change in how we perceive young people and their place in society.
"Adolescence," declared Mr. Gingrich at a speech last year at the American Enterprise Institute, "is a failed 19th century idea. It was an experiment designed to keep middle class kids out of factories and coalmines, and its long-term effect has been a disaster.
"Prior to the middle of the 19th century, people were either children or they were young adults. The average age of going to Princeton at the time of the Revolution was 13."
"We've invented this middle zone, were kids are born, trapped in mindless bureaucracies, cheat routinely, and end up hanging out and watching junk television, doing drugs and having sex.
"What if every year you could get out earlier than twelve years became an automatic grant of scholarship. We'll take the entire cost of your senior year and give it to you in a scholarship if you can graduate in three years."
Mr. Gingrich's remarks represent an exciting shift in thought in how we approach the challenge of education. Rewarding naturally quick learners and advancing children based on a dual approach of merit and incentive-based policy is not something we often hear discussed by the policymakers for publicly financed K-12 education.
It's time to relearn a bit of this wisdom of the ages, and, where appropriate, end adolescence as a convenient concept or educational excuse for lack of seriousness on the part of our youth in their appreciation for the necessity of life-long learning.
For it is that life-long learning which only a young man or woman can appreciate that equips one for success in any endeavor one aspires to achieve; to pursue happiness; to know the value of living well in this life while humbly praying for reward in the next.
If we mean what we say in aiming to reform higher learning, we must be honest in our assessment that real change for our youth always must first be made real in the home.
Let's strive to treat our young people not as adolescents to be coddled, but as the young adult men and women they so desperately desire in their hearts to become.
Tom Shakely is a student at the Pennsylvania State University and Web Editor for The Philadelphia Bulletin. Find more at his website or e-mail him.
This reminds me of an event in high school where I was called into a room with a governor's investigation committee on education. As one of the schools smartest students I was rightly one of the few invited to participate in the discussion. But at that time I had no idea how to improve the school because I was a child and had been doing my job of being a student of what was being taught - nobody taught me in advance to even think of what could be done better and as one who had succeeded at adapting to what was, I didn't know what to suggest they could do better.
Now almost 40 years later I have collected lots of such ideas, several posted in other comments on this forum. Although I knew a lot then, I know lots more now. So I'd say adolescence is a reality.
Now ending the educator's deference to and coddling of adolescence by presenting more serious subject material getting kids to think of things they wouldn't normally is a great idea. One way I got to be one of the smartest was going outside the educator's shoebox of lesson plans. Another is interacting with God. And that's a serious topic kids should be taught K12.
Problem is, the really engaging, challenging, productive occupations in the adult world require background and preparation that our society offers in schools. So the answer can't be to get kids out of school and into the adult world at a younger age; they won't have the skills they need to advance in their careers.
We've got to improve the educational experience that our children end up with, not give up on it. A tighter connection between the schools and adult life through which students learn what great opportunities to apply their abilities and interests exist out there, and through which they could be exposed to work that interests them might help.
A meaty, lean curriculum that provides a path to the highest goals of the educational endeavor and wastes nobody's time is key.
Merit-based reward and advancement, as you point out, are essential.
A little development of our common concept of what makes a successful citizen would help. That we could again hold collectively that the fundamental principle of living well in this life is the humble striving towards reward in the next might be too much to hope for in this secular age.
Maybe, at the heart of it, it's a redirection of the focus of education onto the adult world outside of the academy. The standard by which education is judged should be external, how well it prepares students to be successful adult citizens. I don't think the country is holding its schools accountable on those terms at present.
We need to make the preparation accomplished by the total educational experience so valuable that even the kids perceive it. Then I think we'll see those who want to be successful adult citizens take advantage of a wonderful opportunity in a mature, adult-like way.
Steve, I agree with a lot of what you wrote. I don't agree that this is a secular age. Newt's polls show this is still a Christian nation but as David Barton says the problem is Christians don't vote enough so our representatives reflect those who do vote instead of the nation.
The big problem is our biggest lifelong educational system, churches, are all prostituted per Rev. 17:5 and because of serving money instead of God, it's in the pastor's best interest to keep his/her flock dumbed down and afraid of conroversy so they don't vote.
So my solution is to start a new political party http://usafounders.org which can reorient people to the Bible.
Education if we did away with the notion of teenager (which is an extention of childhood) and went back to the concept of apprenticeship. By the way the idyllic picture of childhood did not appear until the 19th century. If we looked on and required those transiting between the ages of 13 and 20 as apprentice adults we'd end up with more responsible young people in higher education.