Eminently reasonable request, John. Drafting my remarks for my college's commencement ceremony got me to thinking about the common cliche that the ceremony is called "commencement" because it's a beginning and not and ending. Beginning of what? Presumably the rest of your life, or the impossible work of fixing every thing that has been broken, something like that. If we veer to avoid that cliche, we tend to celebrate students' achievement of completing a credential that can get them a good job with a decent salary.
Nothing wrong with getting a good job with a decent salary. But Cavell's understanding of Walden as essentially an attempt to solve a puzzle of leaving made me wonder whether we in high ed help students appreciate what attending, and leaving, college means, how profound of an effort and change it is, and why. College students are imagining and building and trying on whole lives while they study.
I believe that we should help them see, more or less from the beginning, that this building is what they're doing (or should be doing) and that they're doing this building so that when they leave they have a sense of how to build their own life in town — e.g., nurturing deep friendships, remaining alive to hard questions at least some of the time, going to see some art now and then, seeing oneself as embedded in a social context that one has some obligation toward.
How do we in higher ed do a better job of teaching students about leaving? Now THAT'S the truly hard question.
Eminently reasonable request, John. Drafting my remarks for my college's commencement ceremony got me to thinking about the common cliche that the ceremony is called "commencement" because it's a beginning and not and ending. Beginning of what? Presumably the rest of your life, or the impossible work of fixing every thing that has been broken, something like that. If we veer to avoid that cliche, we tend to celebrate students' achievement of completing a credential that can get them a good job with a decent salary.
Nothing wrong with getting a good job with a decent salary. But Cavell's understanding of Walden as essentially an attempt to solve a puzzle of leaving made me wonder whether we in high ed help students appreciate what attending, and leaving, college means, how profound of an effort and change it is, and why. College students are imagining and building and trying on whole lives while they study.
I believe that we should help them see, more or less from the beginning, that this building is what they're doing (or should be doing) and that they're doing this building so that when they leave they have a sense of how to build their own life in town — e.g., nurturing deep friendships, remaining alive to hard questions at least some of the time, going to see some art now and then, seeing oneself as embedded in a social context that one has some obligation toward.
How do we in higher ed do a better job of teaching students about leaving? Now THAT'S the truly hard question.