How We Learn Today

I don't write about my work very often here, largely because so often my work is what keeps me from writing. But it is worth saying that I enjoy my job a great deal. Teaching composition and communication to undergraduate students who have come from all over the world is challenging and exciting work that keeps me very much on my toes.
And I like to be kept on my toes.

Recently I engaged in a rousing debate about fiscal policy with some of my more conservative family members. Each participant kept pulling out historical and theoretical evidence to back their case. It was exciting, and it certainly kept me on my toes. But now, when I look back on those exchanges, I'm surprised at how much I understand about the concepts and context behind the issue, behind the financial crisis. I never studied anything that would help me understand this stuff. My degree from UW may help me to sift and winnow through the news and analysis. My degree from UC Davis might help me parse the meaning of a skilled rhetorician. But why do I understand the banking crisis or the stimulus plan well enough to debate these issues with confidence?

I'm going to lean on my work experience to help me explore this question.

The undergraduate students arrive here at CEU each with a very different educational background. At 18 or 19 years old, however, most of them to have one thing in common - most are just beginning to assemble a worldview they can call their own - a world view that is getting closer everyday to coherence. But it's not there yet.

From some of my stronger students, I've read drafts of essays that contain issues like this one: One paragraph asserts point A) 'Companies must make the pursuit of profit the number one priority.' And in the same essay, sometimes in the next paragraph, I'll read point B) 'The well-being of the environment and the global community must dictate a company's policy.' When I point out the potential conflict between points A & B, the reaction I'll get depends largely on the student's background.

To oversimplify:
Students coming from east of Budapest will pull their research sources out of a backpack. They will point out that each of the points came from books or journals - experts, they'll tell me, have written these things down. Why am I making a fuss?
Students from west of here do something different. They'll attempt to argue that the points do not conflict. They'll stand at my desk and describe how, "you know, with some companies, like the ones who want to protect themselves from stuff, but they also want to make money, and---"
And that's where I stop them. I stop them and say, if you are able explain how these two points can co-exist, then you need to do so in the essay, in writing. (They haven't managed to do so yet.)

The exciting part of my work stems from the challenge of digging into the diversity and helping this group firm up their understanding of complex ideas.

When I think back to my email debate with my uncle and my cousin, I see how that challenge goes well beyond the walls of this business school in Budapest. In the past few months, world affairs have forced me to evaluate the way I learn about and subsequently digest current events.
It started when I got back for the fall semester. I have a lot of Georgian students. Their turbulent country was interesting to me well before the conflict with the Russians this past summer, but my understanding of Georgia lacked the context to put the wine embargo, the rose revolution, or oil pipelines in their places. Then I heard America Abroad's program "Pipeline Politics and Caspian Conflict." It pulled the history, the politics, and the economics of that region into a well documented summary. Now I know I won't be able to debate Georgian politics with a Georgian after such a 60 minute survey, but the show informed all of my subsequent reading and discussions on the topic. I am far from an expert, but I am informed. And to feel informed on a subject as complicated as Russian-Georgian relations is no small thing.

I liked having that feeling, and I fostered it with AP updates, blog posts, and media coverage.
Then the housing bubble burst. I've posted on the issue here from time to time, and as the situation has developed, I'm more and more surprised at how much I'm learning. Especially since the stuff I am learning should not be interesting to me in any way.

I like literary fiction, modern rock, sci-fi, wine, Indian food, and movies that rely on insane special effects. I should not have developed an understanding of the complex debate behind Timothy Geithner's reluctance to say the word "Nationalization."

But I have.

And I think that learning process speaks to the new way adults learn. We lean hard on the information infrastructure to help us contextualize every decision, and quickly. So the ability to educate oneself has become a crucial element of operating in the modern world. Traditional education is essential, more essential than ever, because it offers the tools needed to educate oneself. But beyond the basics, someday soon - if not already - a person will not be able to participate in modern democracy or the global economy without the ability to absorb information quickly, critique it, and integrate that information into the way he/she sees the world.

But when I look back at the America Abroad program, I realize that the information it provided was different from what mainstream media is putting out there. It provided something I needed that I wasn't getting anywhere else. The program did not address current events; it provided context that helped me understand those events.

That lesson helped me educate myself about the financial meltdown and its aftermath. I've been collecting sources that help me fit the economic crisis into the way I see the world.

This American Life has been an unexpected help. The show steered away from its typical content for two shows, each with the specific intent to teach listeners about the obscenely complex basic principles that led to our current economic situation.

Then I read the article in December's Vanity Fair by Niall Ferguson. I wouldn't have gotten through this one without the radio shows, but it cleared up a lot of the more complicated stuff. Vanity Fair is clearly trying hard to educate its readers. They've put all of the articles that deal with the meltdown into a mini-archive on their homepage.

Last week I tackled something in The Atlantic by Richard Florida, and while it was looking more to the future, he laid out his ideas so clearly that it was another piece that put things into perspective.

The traditional outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have done more than any TV outlet to help me keep up on a day to day basis, while the up-and-comers at Planet Money the blog/podcast keep helping me break the more complicated stuff down into digestible pieces.

And while I'm happy to have found all this, I think most people have to dig to find information that puts today's issues into context. I think the new media infrastructure is beginning to recognize the need, but it's taking a lot of time to change from the old formats that allowed for long-form analysis.

So, how do you cope? What outlets in the information infrastructure help you. How do you put the news of today in its place and avoid the contradictions and cognitive dissidence?