Education and Its Discontents
Education and Its Discontent – A lack of adequate education exists in most places for “knowledge of life,” involving American public policy, history, sociology, psychology, culture wars, and religion. College graduates are in serious need of judgment in these areas – the lack of which is partly due to an almost exclusive emphasis on job training, not the original purpose of advanced learning. At present, we concentrate on only two out of a possible eight forms of intelligence – logical/mathematical and linguistic intelligences. But we are a mixture of other types as well – existential, spatial, musical, inter and intrapersonal, and body intelligence. All these are important for development of the whole person and society, and we not only don’t test for them, we don’t teach them to our students. – Dawn Blasko, Ph.D. and Charles Brock, M.Litt.
Dawn Blasko, Ph.D.
Dr. Dawn Blasko is the associate dean of academic affairs at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. She is a cognitive psychologist who teaches courses in research methods, and cross cultural psychology as well as learning and cognition. She has two major research interests. One is the power of non-literal language and how people use perceptual and social cues to understand the real intent behind a seemingly innocuous utterance. She also studies metaphor as a powerful creative force that can link and transform our understanding of the world. Her other work focuses on spatial intelligence and its variability across genders as well as its malleability with training. She received her bachelor’s degree from Marywood University in Scranton, Pa. and her MA and Ph.D. from Binghamton University, SUNY.
