José Antonio Bowen

Life has always been an open-book exam

We understand why it is better to teach a starving man to fish, but a repertoire course is worse than handing a a fish to a starving man. Our students are not starving; if anything, they are drowning in a sea of information. So a survey course is more like handing a giant box of chocolates to a fat, rich man.

The problem of teaching, therefore, is getting not the facts but the context from my brain to yours.

The very definition of what it means to be alone has changed. To be physically alone is still relatively easy, but many of us struggle daily to turn off e-mail, computers, or cell phones... Our students...find requests not to text during these activities strange, annoying, and downright silly.

Time for reflection and interaction is a casualty of the digital age, and one of the primary goals of higher education should be to reclaim this time.

If teaching is largely about faculty-student interaction, then we have to recognize that human interaction is changing.