A student's criticism opened my eyes time back. I was teaching public policy & economics in a graduate program I was running. I had just learned that nobody in the graduate seminar had read W Edwards Deming. I assigned it for a couple of weeks down the road, and placed a personal copy on library reserve. Each student could take the book out a day, and I asked them to self organize and assign chapters every one was responsible for, and each to skim the rest, plus to have a debriefing session before class. I was just suggesting techniques we'd used in graduate school to survive and cope with the six-ten readings a week workload.
My students didn't do it. Everyone came to class as if nothing happened. One student was quite vociferous on how dared I assign an entire book on such short notice. People seem to have a sense of entitlement vis-a-vis knowledge. We may want to accomplish and achieve without work. I confess I felt and still feel responsible for not knowing in advance that Deming was not a requirement in all undergraduate curricula irrespective of a student's major. To me it was like Newton's comprehensive work or like Sun Tzu's Art of War, that we're all called to know.
My student's critique showed me that we miss a lot. We ought to look again and take on some classics, even if late in life.
Fuel curiosity and tomorrow you'll know a little more that humankind already knew.
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