Nowhere in Plato do we learn how many evening symposiums were required for a Socratic certificate. Alexander the Great never had to send back to Aristotle for a transcript of his grades. J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons. This bureaucratization generates a lot of clerical work and committee meetings, but I really doubt that it advances genuine self-propelled learning. After all, what we learn ought to surprise us, open up unexpected opportunities, create whole new industries and cultures.
Bureaucrats can deal only with the known, the predictable, the measurable.
We online teachers are domesticated beasts suddenly at liberty, like the conquistadors' horses running wild on the Texas plains. If we can learn how to be free, and how to stay free, then we can teach the same freedom to our students. I can't imagine a nobler calling. A version of this article appeared in June in TCC-J, an online journal. Crawford Kilian is chair of the Media Technology Division at Capilan College.