from Judith McDaniel
A woman I work with told me she had entered a fully online Master’s program in educational technology. Why? These were some of the reasons she gave: She was anticipating being laid off from her job. She has children to support as a single mom. Her employer was extending the education benefit even to employees who were laid off. “How could I not?” she asked.
It was an easy answer for her, not for all the reasons I just recorded, but because she works today with some educational technology. She loves her work and is skilled at. The course work is exciting to her, even in this first month. “Stuff you already know?” I asked. “NO,” she said emphatically, “better ways to do the things I’m doing now.”
That is an education worth having.
Padua University Diploma (M.D.) 1602 Italy
We hear on the news that technical schools and community colleges are filled to the brim with folks who are out of work and trying to upgrade or retool their skills. Those are good reasons to go back to school too.
Is there ever education not worth having? I sometimes think—when I hear an Arizona State legislator denigrate higher education because he got where he is with just a GED—that even the GED was wasted on him.
But seriously. Some of my undergraduate students aren’t in college for an education, they are there for a credential. They seem to have no interest in the material being presented. They are interested in the point they missed on a quiz (but then fail to turn in a paper). To my mind, that is a waste of their time and mine.
I wish all of my students were excited because they are learning things they want to learn. And I wish everyone who wanted to know something important had a way to learn it.
