Excelsior/COSC/TESC learners should read this

On my web site I've posted Peter Glaeser's "history" from Excelsior (but could equally be COSC or TESC), through Warwick, to Liechtenstein financier. It will be of interest to student of all three assessment colleges. .HERE


I have included excerpts from posts written to AED in 1998, where the writer makes statements about quality and predictions about outcomes, that we still regularly read here in 2002.

The difference is that this time we can check those charges of low or no quality by way of outcomes, and we can check the predictions of certain and utter failure, This is a unique opportunity to compare the rhetoric of the past with the incontrovertible facts of the here and now.


Lawrie Miller
author: BA n 4 Weeks and Accelerated Master's Degrees by Distance Learning
http://geocities.com/BA_in_4_Weeks

.

 

I love it! Thanks, Lawrie.

Finger wagging isn't limited to those who earn degrees by testing. Many of my peers said it was impossible to earn a degree by DL, period. The education counselors at one base to which I was assigned seemed to know nothing about it. I did my own research, talked to people who knew what they were talking about, found Bear's book(s) at the base library (among a few others on DL), told the education counselors about my findings, and the rest is history. In short, I didn't allow myself to become dependant upon what others thought they knew or wanted me to believe. I thought independently and conducted my own research. (Is that part of what them there perfessers call ej-you-kay-shun?)

Maybe the question, “Aren’t you really just seeking a degree instead of an education?” should be altered and posed back to the one who asked the question in this way: “Aren’t you really asking me to become institutionalized, rather than educated?” It is, after all, self-evident that there are many different ways of becoming educated. What many seem to believe is education is really the institutionalization of knowledge and making what may be obtained independently seem unattainable without the help of trained professionals, upon whom we should forever be intellectually dependent. I think the problem that some have with testing out, or even DL in general, is that it allows the students to be as independent as their abilities will allow them to be. That is dirty pool to many in the education industry, and to those who have bought into what they have been taught throughout their entire academic career, from grade school on.

My signature block features a quotation taken from an essay entitled “The Seven-Lesson School Teacher,” by John Taylor Gatto*, who is a three-time New York State Teacher of the Year. He quit teaching in 1991. I believe the fifth lesson, referred to in the quotation, is one that was meant to stick with us throughout our lives. I feel that it is extremely important that those who seek non-traditional methods of becoming educated realize that they are challenging everything they have been taught about becoming “educated.”

__________________

*“The Seven-Lesson School Teacher”, by John Taylor Gatto. Taken from the book, Dumbing Us Down, New Society Publishers, 1991. You can read the entire essay at http://members.aol.com/singletax/7lesson.htm . Go to John Taylor Gatto’s website by directing your browser to http://www.johntaylorgatto.com