Board of Trustees

Administrative Divisions

Chancellor's Update

March 1997

by Dr. John W. Bardo -- jbardo@wcu.edu

Address at the Community Summit on Education
March 22, 1997 - Asheville, North Carolina

I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today about a topic with which we should all be concerned: the future of education. Recent surveys by the Wall Street Journal/NBC News show that Americans currently recognize that solving problems with education is the highest priority for this country. It will affect all aspects of American life as we move into the next century, and failure of our system of education can only result in loss of competitiveness, reduction in the standard of living, and a spiraling downward of our expectations for our own futures. Whether or not you have children, your future--indeed my future--is inextricably tied to solving the fundamental problems with our education system.

Given my background and areas of expertise, today I am going to focus most specifically on the issues affecting high schools, community colleges and universities. To be sure, many of the issues that we face can best be handled through very early intervention strategies such as Smart Start, Head Start and early childhood programs. And certainly, those programs can be expected to have longer-range benefits. However, we are dealing with a generation of students who need immediate attention and who did not benefit from these types of programs.

Before getting into recommendations for specific actions, I would like to briefly overview some of the most pressing conditions nationally and internationally that can be expected to have a fundamental effect on our future.

First, it is almost trite to say that we live in a time of change. Change is omni-present, pervasive, and it affects all aspects of society. Today's students can expect to live their entire lives within the context of ever increasing rates of change.

Second, a fundamental component of this condition of change involves explosion in the amount of information available. It has been estimated that, by the year 2020, the total amount of information available to people will double every 79 days. Even if this estimate is off by a factor of 100 percent, we can still expect the gross amount of information to double twice a year.

Think about the implications of this one projection for the future of education. If you are a professor who prepares a syllabus in August for a course that meets in the Fall semester, by the time you finish the semester fully half of all information about your subject may have been discovered since you wrote the syllabus. The "facts," as you are teaching them, may be totally outdated, and in fact, they may have been proven wrong. I will argue that the speed of change in information available, particularly when coupled with changes in the technology for accessing that information, will fundamentally change the nature of what--and how--we teach.

Most particularly, we can use technology to reduce the amount of time that teachers spend teaching rote materials and allow them to concentrate on more advanced skills. Technology, when properly integrated into the teaching situation will allow us to focus much more on guiding and mentoring student learning rather than lecturing and demonstrating. It will help us move from a fundamentally passively oriented teaching paradigm to a much more active, student-learning centered paradigm. This is a critical change that needs to be incorporated at all levels of education and the technology and information explosion will probably be the catalyst that forces this shift.

A second critical issue that can be directly related to change involves the nature of the person as an individual. I am particularly referring here to the individual's sense of value and self-worth. We are facing, as a society, the maturation of a generation of youth many of whom have little exposure to, or understanding of, values, ethics, personal responsibility, or community. This is not a condemnation of them as individuals or as a group, but merely an observation that change in our society has brought with it a loss of a sense of place for the individual and a clear venue for discussion of basic societal values and development of a coherent philosophy. Indeed, this may be the single greatest educational issue of our age in that it fundamentally affects the student's willingness and ability to learn and appropriately utilize the other intellectual skills that are needed. Most specifically, we are not promulgating a sense of responsibility for one's own behavior nor are we expecting that individuals "stand for something." And, I do believe in the old adage that "if one does not stand for something, one will fall for anything." If education is to serve this nation, region, or community well for the next century, it must deal both with issues of change as they affect the workforce and as they affect the individual's sense of self-worth.

What is most interesting about this set of issues is that people in business and the general public have been telling us in education that these are the fundamental problems. Unfortunately, we have not to date chosen to hear or respond systematically. That must change and we must begin to change it now.

Turning first to issues of workforce-related skills, we now know a great deal about what will be demanded. To be competitive, our workers need to have skills that have immediate application in today's marketplace, but mastering these skills is not enough to sustain a career. Sustainable careers are built on the ability to keep one's skills current and to keep pace with change. What is required for the long-run, therefore, are the skills most associated with a traditional arts and sciences education.

In a world of change, highly skilled jobs increasingly require the ability to conceptualize a problem; to identify its crucial elements; to determine the nature of information required to address the problem; to access or generate the information; and to make a decision based on the information. In the language of education, we call this ability "critical thinking." Regardless of specialty or level of education, all our students require development of critical thinking skills.

Second, students must be able to communicate with others orally and in writing. Clear, accurate, focused communication with others is absolutely critical and, at all levels, education needs to develop the individual's ability to communicate.

Communication, however, depends not only on performance, but on the ability to read complex material with understanding. In my own research on freshman performance, for example, colleagues and I found that standardized reading achievement scores predicted performance in both verbal and quantitative classes better than any predictor other than high school class rank. In our study involving 1200 freshman, reading achievement predicted performance in freshman math better than math achievement scores (though both were significant). Clearly, if one can read well, one can learn. So, increased attention to reading with comprehension is a crucial workforce-related skill.

Likewise, students need a fundamental understanding of mathematics. Many of the problems with which they will be faced will either have mathematical dimensions or will be subject to some form of mathematical analysis. Competency at a reasonable level with mathematics will remain a critical basic skill.

Within the context of these general learning-skills, education must begin to move its focus away from the accumulation of facts to developing facility with methods of knowing. Since facts change rapidly, and the amount of information is becoming realistically boundless, developing a clear capacity for systematic methods of knowing becomes increasingly crucial. This will, if this view is correct, mark a fundamental departure from educational tradition. Methods of understanding are normally not the focus of most high school, community college, or university curricula--they tend to be much more fact based. But, a clear understanding of, and facility with, methods of knowing allows the individual to become an independent learner and critical thinker.

Aside from these liberal arts skills, we know that there are two other changes in the fundamental organization of work that must be addressed directly. These involve the uses of technology and the need to work in groups.

Taking the issue of working with groups first, we know that the structure of work has changed--and will continue to change. The individual can "make a difference," but increasingly work is being performed in groups and teams. Very little in education, however, prepares students to work in teams and there is very little in the curriculum that causes a student to practice group skills. Indeed, it is the co-curricular activities in most high schools, community colleges or universities that traditionally provide the greatest opportunities for group skill development. Education will need to incorporate group activities and thought patterns if we are to succeed. And this means that teachers and professors will need to re-think not only the structure of their assignments to students, but to re-conceptualize themselves as personal mentors of students. What is called for is a re-emphasis on the traditional role of the teacher as guide and mentor, not the teacher as the source of wisdom.

Since I have come to WCU, I have placed a very high priority on developing the technological infrastructure of the University. I can now claim, with little fear of contradiction, that Western is the most technologically advanced campus of the University of North Carolina with regard to the applications of technology to teaching and learning. To be sure, there are many things we do not yet have, but we have surged ahead in this arena. I am a believer in access to technology, but I am not a believer in technology as an end in itself or a cure for educational problems. Technology allows schools and universities to re-think methods of teaching and the distribution of teaching time to improve teaching outcomes. Technology is a tool that may transform our teaching processes, especially those that are rote, basic, or repetitive in character. Through appropriate integration of technology, we may be able to restructure our classes to allow teachers and professors to spend more time with students on advanced thinking and performance skills.

For example, at Western, the vast majority of our freshmen are required to complete English composition using one of our multimedia classrooms. These classrooms allow the professor to work with individual students, to have the students work in groups on a project, to share work across individuals, or to access internet resources for examples, data, or assistance. Moreover, technology provides opportunities for students to practice and hoan their skills through active learning and out-of-classroom assignments. I doubt that technology can or will replace the professor-student relationship, but it does have the potential to change that relationship so that the professor can focus on the development of more advanced intellectual and--dare I say--moral skills.

This then, leads to the second area of concern: education of the individual with regard to a sense of self-worth, ethics, and values. In their recent book, The Abandoned Generation, William Willmon and Thomas Naylor, of Duke University, describe the symptoms of a malaise that affect all of us in education. In fact, if I had had the ability to use a search program on the book and substitute the name "WCU" every place that the name "Duke" appeared, the book would have fit us equally as well.

What the authors describe is a generation of students who are faced with the adolescent and early adult perennial problem of searching for meaning for their lives and futures without having developed the requisite tools or background. Education, especially education in the post-Vietnam War era, moved away from addressing questions of meaning and values to "value free," "objective" approaches. This move was coupled with the death in colleges and universities by court action of in loco parentis. Therefore, as the authors point out, much education, especially in those institutions in the public sector, has moved away from examination of basic motivations, ethics and values to a curriculum based on facts and theories in isolation.

In our current environment, where there are many significant disagreements among political and religious groups regarding particular values, return to a values-based education may be particularly difficult. However, for education to serve us well, it is time that this debate be re-engaged and for us to examine fundamental values undergirding both our system of education and our society. I think that a great deal of consensus could be built around certain core values that have traditionally and historically defined the nature of the human community and it is our responsibility to integrate these values into the student's learning experience. Moreover, I would contend that these are the same values that most employers want in their employees and that are essential to a competitive workforce. More specifically education needs to focus on the following issues:

1. Development of a sense of personal responsibility. Each of us needs to understand that we are responsible for our own actions and that these actions have consequences. This means, for example, that students must become responsible for attending class, doing the work as assigned, and asking questions or seeking help when they do not understand. We need to move from the language of "my teacher gave me a particular grade," to "I earned a particular grade." My performance is based, in large measure, on my own actions.
   
2. Development of a sense of self-worth and meaning. Much of the abusive behavior chronicled on campuses and in classrooms across the country can be tied to a lack of meaning and self-worth. In its 1989 study of higher education in the United States, the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education concluded that a critical need in the undergraduate curriculum is for more attention to the social and emotional development of students. I would argue that the issue is not limited to undergraduate education, but that it needs to become a hallmark of education at all levels. Indeed, we are seeing acted out on university campuses across the country self-abusive behaviors involving binge drinking and drug use and abusive behavior toward others involving rape, sexual assault, use of illegal drugs on others (like Rohypnol), assault, theft, and simple inconsiderateness of the needs and rights of others. Many of these issues did not emerge in the college environment; students entered college with them.
   
3. Coupled with a sense of responsibility for one's own actions needs to be a basic work ethic based on an understanding of the nature of commitment. When one takes on responsibility for a job, one needs to have fidelity to that decision. This means a return to the old mountain virtue of "a good day's work for a good day's pay," but it also means recognizing the nature of commitment and the meaning of making good on commitments.
   
4. Undergirding each of these values is a basic sense of ethics, integrity, and honesty. The entire academic enterprise is based on an assumption of integrity, truthfulness, and ethical conduct. Without these values, it would not be possible to teach, research, or extend human knowledge. They are fundamental to the human condition, yet we know that very little educational time is spent in directly addressing these issues in most high schools, colleges, or universities. And, there are very few institutions at any level that could point to threads in a coherent curriculum that speak to development of the individual's sense of ethics across years of study.

These, then, are the issues that face us as we move into the next century. We are beginning to address some of these at Western, and they are becoming part of a campus-wide debate and discussion on the future of our programs. We are working on issues of academic standards, inculcation of basic values, rethinking our judicial processes to place more responsibility on the individual for his or her actions; and examination of how we are going to increasingly deal with underlying value and behavior questions. I am very pleased to report that Western's Faculty Senate passed a resolution in strong support of the University's initiatives in establishing codes of behavior. Likewise, each department and academic program is completing a year of planning of a strong program for assessing the competencies of our seniors. The departments have recently forwarded to their deans tentative plans for senior level assessments aimed at assuring that each graduate of Western not only knows the subject matter of his or her chosen field, but that, as a department, they can demonstrate that each student can read complex material with understanding; write at a collegiate level; think critically about issues related to the major; utilize technology as appropriate to the discipline to address its problems; and utilize mathematics as appropriate to the discipline. We also are beginning to debate and discuss ways in which we can systematically incorporate group learning and problem solving activities into the educational experience. We want all of our graduates to be competitive in the changing world of the 21st century.

I believe, however, that we need as a university to take a much more active role in working together with our colleagues in the school districts and community colleges to solve some of Western North Carolina's most pressing problems. We need, for example, to engage in a systematic discussion about the future of the high school curriculum. Should, for example, there be a general track of courses at the high school level? Are we really offering sufficiently challenging courses within that track to assure that our students are job ready or ready to enter a community college or university? Guilford County, with the leadership of Guilford Tech, has decided to drop its general track and requires students to take choices of school-to-work or college preparatory programs. Perhaps it's time to re-examine our options.

Can we together--universities, community colleges, and high schools, develop a true "seamless web" of education so that young and adult learners can have their needs for strong educational programs met with minimum duplication and wastage of time. We do not yet do a good job of articulating transfer and of coordinating offerings within all three educational sectors. Yet, our entire future depends on a strong educated labor force.

We can make a difference. We can act together to strengthen all of our students' (youth and adult) capacities to learn and compete. We can assure that our students have the ability to go to work and to continue to learn. Moreover, we can assure that our students develop a sense of self-worth; that they understand the value of the other person; and that they understand that they have a responsibility for their communities, schools, and nation. We can help them develop a sense of meaningfulness for their lives. The people of Western North Carolina have the intellect and drive to make it work. It is up to us to provide the opportunities. Thank you.