Student Attrition: An Environmental Response

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded#

Dear Colleagues,

Retention has been a concern of ours for years,
somewhat complementing our attraction and
admission policies and the 'we're-not-for-everyone"
theme.

Some arrive and decide for various reasons
they aren't for everyone either.

Students leave, transfer, drop out, stop out
for a variety of religious experience so to speak.
Optimizing best they can. 

This small animated talk  by Sir Ken Robinson
I've sent out a couple times  suggests some
"environmental" conditions that are "telling"--and
relate to our retention concerns.

Interesting observations about industrialized
"enlightenment" academics,  about varieties
of intelligence, about the Amazing ADHD
"epidemic," about aesthetics and anesthetics,
about the media-swim, about drugging for focus,
& inductive-to-deductive ratios...all add up to
the need for a change in educational paradigm,
claims Robinson..

His  British accent which adds to the "authority"
of his presentation, it can't be denied: and someone 
illustrates his sentences, ideas, metaphors
with instantaneous drawings on a chalk board.

It's quite effective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded#

It takes eleven minutes.  Any response, reaction?
Do you think it's relevant? Something to be factored-in?
An environmental concern as significant to sustainability
as steep slope construction,  lead poisoning
and efforts to restore sanity?

I'm just asking.

PS this terrible parody on Humanities Professionalism
is somewhat relevant too.  Nothing new here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obTNwPJvOI8&feature=player_embedded

xxxooo, Sam