Zut Alors: The Trouble With University Education

I've become very interested in Abi's posts (at Nanopolitan) about the function of the university experience.

Particularly this post, which cites a Christopher Caldwell article positing that the purpose of a university education is not necessarily to deliver measurable learned output, but instead to mark students as "being capable of future learning" (i.e. in a company or other job).

Sure. Measuring learned output is tricky, and you'll never catch me supporting any form of governmentally-sanctioned standardized testing -- especially at the university level, as has been proposed.

But consider this: I had two years of French coursework at my (rural, underfunded, inefficient) high school and three years of French in undergrad. Both the high school and the university described, in their syllabi, that the purpose of these courses was to teach students "about French."

Not to actually teach the language -- to teach students about the language.

Neither high school nor university presumed that any actual French would be learned (read: mastered). Sure, we would be able to conjugate a few verbs and string together a few basic sentences, but that was not the point of the classes, although ostensibly they were French language courses. The idea, as stated on the syllabus and by the faculty, was that the coursework would expose students to the experience of learning another language; the experience of dipping into another culture. The classes themselves were simply necessities; mandates determined by some state authority as fundamental to a student's liberal education.

After five years, how much French did I retain; how much did I actually learn? Un peu. Perhaps less than that.

Thus I have to argue that the experience of "how to learn," or, as Caldwell states, the idea that an educational institution's primary goal is to prepare students for learning later on, seems circuitous and ineffectual.

I'd rather have left the classroom actually knowing how to speak French.

That, however, would have required a very different course and a different educational mindset. And, possibly, a greater potential for student "failure," as it is far easier to pass a course requiring one to "experience" something than it is to pass a course requiring one to master something.

So... thoughts on this? I suppose the other half of the argument is that had I really wanted to learn French (or anything else), I could have done so on my own regardless of any course... but I'm quite busy enough with Hindi now, thank you. ^__^