6th November 2005, 09:14 PM
Nope, I wasn't alluding to research being 'easier' due to the interweb, but to the possibility that the way that teaching (in general) has changed over the years has changed the skill set of the students. Two reasons:
In the past students tended to have many more hours of lectures. These days there are many fewer hours of contact time (and it appears to be decreasing every year) and so students are encouraged more to read around the subject. They have to go out and hunt down the information rather than being given it in lectures and thus their research skills should be better. But, there being less contact time means that hands-on practical training decreases.
Secondly, for the arts, especially, the whole educational system has changed. Perfect spelling and grammar are not the targets, nor is learning by heart the highlights of the great British Empire. Instead, students are encouraged to be more creative and imaginative and to see things from both sides. Whether these new post-modernist approaches to education are a good thing or not is an entirely different bag of cats, but they do tend to put one in the right mind-set for post-processual theoretical archaeology. And one might further argue that the loss or dumbing down of subjects such as metal work, wood work, PE, sport, horticulture, etc, tends to diminish the expectation of doing a job that requires physical activity when leaving school.
In the past students tended to have many more hours of lectures. These days there are many fewer hours of contact time (and it appears to be decreasing every year) and so students are encouraged more to read around the subject. They have to go out and hunt down the information rather than being given it in lectures and thus their research skills should be better. But, there being less contact time means that hands-on practical training decreases.
Secondly, for the arts, especially, the whole educational system has changed. Perfect spelling and grammar are not the targets, nor is learning by heart the highlights of the great British Empire. Instead, students are encouraged to be more creative and imaginative and to see things from both sides. Whether these new post-modernist approaches to education are a good thing or not is an entirely different bag of cats, but they do tend to put one in the right mind-set for post-processual theoretical archaeology. And one might further argue that the loss or dumbing down of subjects such as metal work, wood work, PE, sport, horticulture, etc, tends to diminish the expectation of doing a job that requires physical activity when leaving school.