He’s written a book called “Teaching Naked” that, as its title suggests, strips bare the components of what we once considered to be the bedrock of a college education: Sitting in a class before a professor who knows things we don’t know, and wants to teach us about them.
Bowen’s talk touched on how taking technology out of the classroom may actually help students focus and retain knowledge, and how professors will continue to transform the learning process by guiding students to learn to change themselves, learn to accept and analyze varying viewpoints, and to cross-relate subject matter. This emphasis on overall liberal arts learning at the expense of “skills”-type pre-professional training is where the future of education is at, he argues. After all, Bowen notes, thousands of chemical engineers who were hired at six figures just a few years ago were laid off in Texas last year as the energy sector continues to transform itself. And studies show that current college graduates will have had seven jobs by the time they are ten years into their working careers.
What are employers looking for? According to a Hart & Associates research study, they value communications skills, complex problem solving, intercultural fluency, innovation, critical thinking skills (82% of employers want more than they’re getting), in other words, skills over major. Bowen’s mantra: Declare a mission, not a major. Define what matters to you.
Finally, he emphasized what we all know, that learning to cultivate relationships, valuing reflection, building resilience, and learning how to fail, are all keys to defining the character that ultimately breeds successful citizens in life. And, as any academic would, he ended with a quote, from Emerson: “Get the soul out of bed.”