 Photographer Amanda Koster of SalaamGarage speaks during the TEDx Seattle at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle Friday April 16, 2010. Photo by Stephen Brashear, licensed under Creative Commons. |
Anya Kamenetz, a crazy smart writer I met at sxsw last year, argued this week that TED is the new Harvard. She says:
TED is in the process of creating something brand new. I would go so far as to argue that it’s creating a new Harvard — the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years.
Of course TED doesn’t look like a regular Ivy League college. It doesn’t have any buildings; it doesn’t grant degrees. It doesn’t have singing groups or secret societies, and as far as I know it hasn’t inspired any strange drinking games.
Now I know for a fact that she’s dead wrong about the drinking games. Last time I hosted a TED watching party, the drink of the evening was Tia maria, Elijah craig whiskey, and Decaf coffee. We each took a sip whenever someone said “let me tell you a story,” “incredible,” or “child trafficking.” Good times. Reihan Salan at National Review picked up the idea. He says:
The success of TED doesn’t mean that traditional elite institutions don’t have a place. But it provides a very constructive kind of competition. As TED’s “mindshare” expands, we will hopefully see more efforts like MIT’s OpenCourseWare, if only because elite schools don’t want to lose their relevance and their influence.
James Joyner at Outside the Beltway gets closest to my feelings on the idea:
Look, if I were setting up a university from scratch, I’d probably do it differently than the model that we have now. I certainly wouldn’t have large lecture halls packed with hundreds of students with a disheveled TA leading the way as the model for teaching freshman survey courses. But, here’s the thing: Neither would I get a bunch of smart people to show up and give random 10-minute lectures on whatever quirky idea came to mind.
I think what all these perspectives are failing to understand though, is that the talks aren’t just “whatever quirky idea came to mind,” they are specifically cultivated to have mass appeal. When was the last time you disagreed with a TED speaker? Does Jaime Oliver telling you that kids need healthy food really teach you anything? Here are a few TED themes I’ve watched recently: Fix the Environment, Save the Animals, Stop Slavery, Accept Diversity. Why are we talking about subjects with which no one could possibly disagree? Why aren’t we dissecting the ways in which we disagree? What Harvard has that TED lacks is controversy.
I’d happily willingly eat crow if TED ever invited an Ivy-League professor like Cornel West, who recently described the current problems with the world as “a spiritual malnutrition tied to a moral constipation, where people have a sense of what’s right and what’s good. It’s just stuck, and they can’t get it out because there’s too much greed. There’s too much obsession with reputation and addiction to narrow conceptions of success.” Ivy League colleges are much more willing to challenge established modes of thought, where TED only seems to approve them and narrow them further.
Good education should offend me. It should question my morals, my assumptions, my entire worldview. Good education should include a war of ideas.
I love TED. It’s inspirational, thought-provoking, and occasionally educational, but Harvard it is not.
