Don’t Yank the Sage From His Stage. Postmodern teaching fads are compromising student learning.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | August 8, 2025 | David C. Phillips

[mewzilla]

Kids are just the grist for Deep State’s diploma mills.

[econjack]

I sure hope so. I know a lot of students get seduced into majoring in Gender Studies, Puppetry (yep, Univ of Connecticut), DEI Studies, and other major that destine them to live in the parents’ basement for the next twenty years, but I hope there are still some students who want to be sages.

[econjack]

King championed a constructivist theory of learning according to which “knowledge [is] constructed—or reconstructed—by each individual knower through the process of trying to make sense of new information in terms of what that individual already knows”—a process called “active learning.” What students need, according to this view, is not a “sage on the stage” but a “guide on the side.” “Essentially,” King explained, “the professor’s role [as a ‘guide on the side’] is to facilitate students’ interaction with the material and with each other in their knowledge-producing endeavor.”

I was agreeing with the author and arguing against King's position.

[KrisKrinkle]

“I know a lot of students get seduced into majoring in...”

When I was young I was told it didn’t matter that much what you majored in, the people doing the hiring wanted to see that there was a college degree on your resume. This was a replacement for wanting to see a high school degree because high schools were just pushing people through and giving out unearned degrees. The requirement for a degree was to lighten the workload of hiring so they wouldn’t have to go to the bother of determining true qualifications.

Things got out of control.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

There are a few kids who can learn that way.

Most can not.

So this is a good way to crush the many, to make them not only feel stupid but ruin any chance they may have of learning on their own.

[econjack]

I’ve told this story before, but it’s fitting. A comedian had just finished his show on a college campus and was at a Q&A afterwards. A student asked: “Have you always wanted to do standup comedy?” He answered: “No. I went to college like you and majored in History. After I graduated, I was shocked to learn that all the History factories had closed, so I fell back on standup comedy.” I think a lot of current students are going to discover that the factories in their major are closed, if they were ever open in the first place.

[TexasGator]

“When I was young I was told it didn’t matter that much what you majored in, the people doing the hiring wanted to see that there was a college degree on your resume.”

I am 78. You must be quite younger.

All the guys I knew that went to college went into STEM, economics or education.

Except for the rich dudes that majored in pre-law or pre-med.

Economics led to MBA or CPA. Education provided easy loans that were forgivable.

[odawg]

“This is a crock of crap.”

Your take is precisely what the guy wrote. What is the antecedent of “This” that is a crock of crap.

[Chengdu54]

A lot of people get away with writing articles to justify the fact that they don’t really know anything.

[Cronos]

Good point.

I would also note that not only do you need super brilliant sages like Feynman, but you need students not to be distracted. And in the age of social media attention spans, that would be difficult