As TEDxUW
quickly approaches, and the various efforts involved in producing and promoting
the event near conclusion, I find myself reflecting on the nature of TED
itself. It’s strange to think how much and how quickly the TED idea has grown
in the public conscience in such a short time. TED-talks have only been
available online since 2006, but they’ve quickly become one of the primary
sources by which we become informed on a massive variety of subjects pertaining
to the current state and direction of human culture. Any regular or
semi-regular viewer of TED-talks will testify to a wide range of positive
aspects about the conferences, such as their inclusivity, their diversity, and
their intellectual benefits. But it occurs to me that a TED-talk has much in
common with a classroom lecture, specifically with regards to structure and
intention. By this I mean that both are ostensibly comprised of an “expert”
“lecturing” “students” (take the quotation marks how you will) with the
intention of informing and inspiring the audience. I think it’s fair to say
that most of us recognize one of these institutions as coming much closer to
achieving their intentions than the other. I don’t know if many people would be
surprised when I say that, as a grad student and as an avid TED-viewer, I am
often more interested, more inspired and more informed in the fifteen or so
minutes that I spend watching a TED-talk than I am in a three-hour university
lecture. I’m not out to criticize or berate our current education system,
enough people make good money doing that already. But I am interested in how
the differences between these two “educating” entities affect how successfully
they inform and inspire.
By way of trampling
on my own feet, and as a small apology for my previous remarks to all the good
professors I’ve had the pleasure of learning under, my comparison will be
framed by the ideas of a nineteenth-century writer whose words I would
certainly have never read were it not for my university education. John Henry
Newman was one of the most controversial and foremost intellects of his day. Though
he is best known for his Grammar of
Assent, and rightly so, his Idea of a
University is the single most important text on the theory of education
since Aristotle’s Politics, or so
I’ve been taught by people who apparently know these things. To put it another
way, Newman’s thoughts on education are the most influential in that realm
since the beginnings of Western thought. It was his opinion that it is the duty
of a University to promote development towards what he termed the “Illative
sense” within each individual. This sense goes beyond the acquisition and
storage of knowledge, informing a person’s ability to systematize their
knowledge into an inter-related whole and conduct themselves according to the
dictates of that internal, intellectual “culture” in all situations. The term
“wisdom” could be said to approximate it, but I think Newman means something
less ambiguous by it. In Idea of a
University, he goes on to posit that cultivating this sort of intellect and
inspiring each person to continue this development in their own lives is the only task of the University.
Apologies for the somewhat lengthy quote:
In
default of a recognized term, I have called the
perfection or virtue of the intellect by the name of philosophy,
philosophical knowledge, enlargement of mind, or
illumination;… but, whatever name we bestow on it, it is, I believe, as a
matter of history, the business of a University to make this intellectual
culture its direct scope, or to employ itself in the education of the
intellect… I say, a University, taken in its bare idea… has this object and
this mission; it contemplates neither moral
impression nor mechanical production; it professes
to exercise the mind neither in art nor in duty; its function is intellectual
culture; here it may leave its scholars, and it has done its work when it has
done as much as this. It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters,
to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.
Newman despised the university-system of
his day. He accused it of teaching students only how to acquire and regurgitate
shallow information. According to him, students in these nineteenth-century
schools learned “many things badly, and not one thing well”. Anyone acquainted
with current education-reform themes and rhetoric will surely find these
sentiments familiar. According to
Newman, students would be better off congregating in a single location for four
years with no instructors, no curriculum, and no hierarchy than they were in
their current state. Inherent in his analysis are what I believe to be the keys
to TED’s success.
TED
operates outside any judgemental structures. Grading and examinations force
students to understand large quantities of information quickly and, often,
superficially. With these demands removed, TED audience-members are free to
naturally ingest the information that is most interesting and relevant to their
situation. The audience walks away with what Newman calls “real” (as opposed to
“notional”) apprehension of the propositions they’ve just received.
TED
is concise, and audience-specific. Strict timeframes force speakers to be as
informative, engaging, and instructive as possible in a short amount of time.
There is no room for tangent, redundancy, or overwhelming description of
context. Every second of the less-than-eighteen-minute presentation is entirely
relevant to the single subject under discussion, a subject which each audience
member chose specifically to engage with. So the “inattention epidemic”, if I
may call it that, which has become such a focus for education reformers in recent
years is entirely absent from the TED world.
Finally,
there is an underlying structure within the TED community that bears a striking
resemblance to Newman’s “Illative Sense”. TED is universal. It has the broadest
of agendas. It is about connecting people with people as much as it is about
connecting ideas with ideas. If I may be allowed a slightly liberal stretch,
TED does for culture and community what the “Illative sense” does for the
intellect. TED functions as a compendium of great ideas spoken by great people;
it connects them, inter-relating and systematizing them for access by a global
audience whose perspectives and actions are molded by the “internal culture” it
represents. I think Newman would be thrilled by, and may even take some credit
for, the framework and concept of TED. Spreading ideas, grasping at truth, injecting our own individualism into a body that
shapes and is shaped by it and all others, not with a goal of perfection, but
with an eye towards always perfecting
how we think and who we are: this is the dream of Newman and the success of
TED.