The concept of the master learner is at the forefront of many team members’ minds. ASU helps people become capable of learning anything. Such people can then be problem-solvers and community assets under any circumstances. A central question is: what makes a master learner?
The age of averages is ending.
This shift is so fundamental that if you only read one book this year, it should be Todd Rose’s The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness. Rose explains how we invented the mental model of the “average person” and how we are steadily overcoming the inadequacies and errors of that model. The rise of individualism, or more accurately, the return to individualism, is entirely changing our approach to education, medicine, employment, and more.
On a particularly over-committed day in December, I rushed into a team meeting that had already begun, found an open seat, and got my things settled as I tuned into one of our undergraduate Student Research Analysts, Ethan, sharing his experience about coming to ASU. The question posed in the meeting was, “How can we best communicate the meaning of ASU’s charter to students?” I listened as Ethan shared how he almost didn’t go to college, and how there was a time when he thought college wasn’t for him.
Recently I was teaching a class. I held up my iPhone. Then I asked, “what’s the purpose of education when we can hold the world’s knowledge in our hands?” There were a few minutes of sputtering answers, but the students came up with important insights. They argued that education was more about learning to think critically and ask the right questions than recite back information. I agree, and I think Dr. Neal Lester would also agree. Education is often more about the process and less about the content. The Humanities embrace this concept.
