Infantilization in education
And world intellectual property indicators
A recent faculty meeting at a nearby college was devoted to more effective engagement of students. The majority of students spend most of their time in class engaged in social media or streaming videos, on either their “smartphones” or laptops. Some stubborn faculty insist on giving failing grades to students whose performance on assignments is under 65%, and it just isn’t good for retention. How can faculty get students more involved in learning?
The presenter should certainly know, as an adjunct professor of psychology with a full-time practice, a 50-something dressed in a short skirt on a day with temperatures under 40 degrees F. She provided the faculty with work materials; see photograph below.
The participants were asked to use the crayons to draw pictures in the booklet, from memory, of the teachers who had most influenced their lives. For some participants, the most influential teachers were historical figures who had lived thousands of years ago, so it was not possible to draw them.
Faculty were required to post pictures of themselves on their course pages. It was never explained how such photographs would motivate students to study the knowledge and skills they were expected to master.
Academia, like society’s other public institutions, no longer bars entry due to physical disability, due to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and that is a good thing. An unfortunate consequence of the ADA is that students claiming mental-emotional disabilities are sometimes permitted one additional week after the due date to turn in homework assignments, and they are permitted unlimited time on tests.
Indeed, now that college admissions tests have been eliminated, there is a clamorous call inside academia to eliminate due dates and grades completely, because to impose rigorous standards is now considered racist. Think about that. We are closer to the world of Harrison Bergeron than you might think. Be very careful before you get your next surgery.
Not all countries around the world see things the same way as America. The following map represents a measure of world intellectual property power. It includes all countries with at least 500 patents and industrial design applications in 2022 and 2023, plus a few other populous countries.
China is the world’s leader, with almost 5 million such applications. America is in second place with about 1.2 million. However, Japan and South Korea follow America closely, despite much smaller populations. So we also need to study the number of applications per million population.
Liechtenstein is the world leader in applications per capita, by far, followed by San Marino, Switzerland, and South Korea. The first two of these are not visible on a world map.
The ideal metric of world intellectual property power is the geometric mean of the above two measures: that is, the sum of all patents and industrial design applications, divided by the square root of the population. That is what is depicted in the map above, with yellow at the high end of the spectrum, fading down to blue for lower ranked countries.
By this measure, the leading countries are China, South Korea, Japan, America, Germany, and Switzerland. Of those top six countries, America is the least productive on a per capita basis. The anecdotes above concerning American “higher education” should help explain why.
I am hopeful that President Trump will find a prominent role for Christopher Rufo in his educational reform program. Rufo writes a great Substack about education and the culture to which you should subscribe.
What you have pointed out, Surak, is another sure sign of a dying empire. Although there exists problems, such as lack of inspiration, lack of ambition, lack of quality education, lack of recognition of merit (accomplishment), the root cause is complacency. Somebody else with design, invent and do. We are lazy with our accumulated wealth, our "smart phones", etc. We no longer strive for excellence and accomplishment. We are driven to mediocrity. When man no longer has the desire to achieve, he is trapped.
Somehow many students learned to be quiters long before they get to us. I turned all my exams take home, about 72 hours long, however the expectation is to present clearly weitten complete and correct arguments. not put right answer in a box. You would think I would have 99% A, 1% B as grade distribution. Nope. Passing rate ranges from about 50% to 70% depending on the course. People don't want to make the effort, don't know how to write, don't understand the purpose of it. And there's the groupie of 4 to 6 people that write the same wrong, weird, and unrelated thing hoping to get partial credit assuming I won't notice. On the bright side, about 1 out of 3 are doing ok, and some of these are doing pretty good.