Derek Bok
Derek Bok
Derek Curtis Bokis an American lawyer and educator and the former president of Harvard University. He is the son of Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice Curtis Bok and Margaret Plummer Bok; the grandson of Ladies' Home Journal editor Edward W. Bok and Mary Louise Curtis Bok Zimbalist, founder of the Curtis Institute of Music; the cousin of prominent Maine folklorist Gordon Bok; and the great-grandson of Cyrus H. K. Curtis, founder of the Curtis Publishing Company, publisher of national magazines such...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth22 March 1930
CountryUnited States of America
Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers... reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems.
Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities.
The college that takes students with modest entering abilities and improves their abilities substantially contributes more than the school that takes very bright students and helps them develop only modestly.
For some students, especially in the sciences, the knowledge gained in college may be directly relevant to graduate study. For almost all students, a liberal arts education works in subtle ways to create a web of knowledge that will illumine problems and enlighten judgment on innumerable occasions in later life.
I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.
Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.
The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification.
Although professors regard improving critical thinking as the most important goal of college, tests reveal that seniors who began their studies with average critical thinking skills have progressed only from the 50th percentile of entering freshmen to about the 69th percentile.
Colleges do not merely offer preparation for the future; they occupy four years of a student's life, and an institution should do what it can to make these years absorbing and enjoyable.
Most high governmental officials who speak of education policy seem to conceive of education in this light - as a way to ensure economic competitiveness and continued economic growth. I strongly disagree with this approach.
Freshly minted Ph.Ds typically teach the way their favorite professors taught.
What we are doing in educating students is trying to prepare them to live more fulfilling lives for the decades after they graduate. And trying to provide a better, richer, fairer, more decent society for the generations after.
The vast majority of students probably emerge from college with an adequate grasp of no more than a single method of inquiry. Even this capacity may erode over time if it does not relate to experiences and problems that recur in the student's later life.
Universities are in a position where they can think very creatively.