I am interested in your question but I am unclear as to what you mean?

Your comment seems to imply a profit motive (bottom line) in our teaching in the sense that we are helping students to learn things that will maximise profit while ignoring societal, environmental, and community issues.

Is there possibly a wider context in the sense that economics doesn't really teach about how money is created or that we don't teach students to think critically? One of my students in evaluating my teaching criticised it because I was wanting them to think. None of my fellow lectures criticised me for doing that but I ask the question "why did that student think that expecting him to think was not what education was about?"

If the expectation of students is that education isn't fostering deeper thinking then maybe we are programming students to perpetuate the faults in the way society and business work. The consequence of that is that we are implicit in causing the crisis in society if those crisis are caused by a system or processes that need to be challenged.

Of course my view is tainted by my assessment that our economic and monetary system needs to change and that we need to be challenging the assumptions upon which it is built. If education is not helping with the next generation asking those questions then "higher education" is a "partner in crime".

Hello Errol,

Thank you for that - highly appreciated.

Well, indeed, critical thinking and reflection were (and might in som cases continue to be) missing in action when it comes to teaching business at universities... I liked your statement, as this really brief what I mean (in response to your first line) ... If education is not helping with the next generation asking those questions then "higher education" is a "partner in crime". And, unfortunately, in some instances this is the case! Well, the question that poses itself now - why CRITICAL THINKING OR THINKING is considered an addition to rather than being an integral part!? May be we need to re-train the lecturers not the students... and ask them to take the more difficult route rather than only, which might increase their work load when it comes to designing and marking assessments that engage the students' critical thinking and reflection abilities.

Thanks again...

Regards

Theodora Issa

Theodora,

I think the issue of workload and to some extent the external assessment requirements are part of the problem. When under pressure to prepare materials for teaching, it is easy to fall back to the PowerPoint slide and recall type assessment rather than to take time to think of exercises that force students to think through the issues. I want to avoid critical statements of the methods of assessing teaching, research, and university rankings but all these can and I believe do send the wrong message to teachers and lecturers. As a consequence, our teaching goes in the wrong direction.

Here in the UK, I believe this is clearly the case with the schooling focus on obtaining GCSEs. It sounds good to be able to say that students are obtaining these qualifications but if the coaching to obtain those grades has pushed the students to focus on lower level cognitive skills of recall and maybe application then we are missing the point.

My institution is a vocationally focused university but there is a clear emphasis on doing things that will improve our rating in things like the National Student Survey, University Rankings, REFs, and Employability. These often dominate discussions leaving crucial issues left out of discussions.

I see this focus pushing for us to teach what industry wants and not to have graduates who might question current practice. So coming back to your question, yes, I see us as "partners in crime" and that is the reason that I post provocative quotes and signs on my door and put challenging quotes into my lecture slides.

Its also why I support campaign groups like 'Positive Money', 'Basic Income', 'Peace Groups', and sustainability campaigns because we need to be forcing people to rethink what we are doing, the assumptions that society works under, and what is happening in wider society.

We need our students to be seeing the assumptions behind politicians statements and to be questioning whether those assumptions are valid. If we don't history will continue to repeat itself and more frequently than in the past. UK is already following a path which will lead to the next crash by following policies that brought about the previous crash. Our leading public school educated politicians do not understand that there is an alternative to austerity and borrowing. How can they when they haven't learnt to think critically? They learnt the system worked on basic assumptions that they believe can't be changed but those assumptions favour those who already possess the wealth and those who control money creation. The only way to change that thinking is to train the next generation to be more open to challenging the assumptions and education isn't doing that.

Sorry, I have ranted a little.

Very good contribution Errol, I would comment on your statement " The only way to change that thinking is to train the next generation to be more open to challenging the assumptions and education isn't doing that." however, this might happen in the western world, but not in the developing countries... Well, I would like to hear of examples if this happens.

Regards

Theodora Issa