Topic: Go ahead and order “College Daze: The Need for Innovative Education Reform in America’s Colleges and Universities” available now.

From the back cover:

Sleeping in class. Sleeping through class.  Copying homework.  Cramming for tests.  Dull lectures.  Bitching about teachers.  For just about everyone, this is how we remember school.  This is certainly how I remember my college education.  While many have fond memories of school because of friends they’ve met, and experiences they’ve had, this type of education – the traditional count-down-the-minutes till the end of class education – has reached a critical point for our society.

Frustrated.  Depressed.  Confused.  Ignorant.  Apathetic. Cynical. Inactive. Wasteful. For many Americans, these are the lives we live, and the people we are.  We don’t love our jobs. We have little time for anything besides work. We don’t travel like we want to. We’ve traded in experiences for money and possessions. We’re unaware of the world around us. We have no hope for a better tomorrow. We don’t even begin to push the limits of who we could be. We’ve sacrificed our childhood dreams. We’ve become the people we thought we’d never become. These are the declines of our society.

In order to combat these declines, me must improve the culture of how people develop. The culture of education. Fortunately, many Americans are granted four years of college to develop before entering into their adult lives. However, these are the years that must be highlighted in order to begin curing the ills of our society. We need to re-think our culture that has made college function in a bubble, failing to prepare many graduates for the unique challenges of the real world. We need to re-think our culture that encourages parents to send their children directly into college, without receiving a break to explore the world and reflect on their lives. We need to re-think our college culture that has made the pursuit of a college education synonymous with diplomas, grades, and the status attached to a school’s name, instead of education for its own sake, coupled with out-of-class experiences to develop intelligent, thoughtful, confident, and compassionate individuals.

Fortunately, improving society won’t rest on whoever is the President of the United States of America.  Fortunately, improving education won’t rely on waiting for test scores to improve, the next education policy, or the next education budget. Improving both education and society can be done by simply innovating the culture of America’s colleges and universities. After reading this book, everyone from students to college Presidents will be forced to examine the values behind higher education and personal development in America.  After reading this book, we will have begun the discussion as to what actions need to take place in order to transform the words and ideas in this book, into the realities that can revoultionize higher education as we know it.

There’s actually a whole lot more to this book than I could fit on this back cover, but that’s why I wrote a book, and not just a back cover.  So…grab a coffee, a beer, whatever makes you happy, and enjoy the read.

-Dan Lilienthal

Topic: The unknown

Let me return to asking you guys questions.  What about your future, and the unknowness of it, scares you?  or doesn’t scare you?

The next 2 mos., I’m traveling on a dime.  I’m nervous about blowing my budget, and what that would lead to, although I’ll do anything but move home, that would be admitting defeat.  So much can happen in 2 mos., although it seems like a short amount of time. 

Topic: Moved by my own words

I just re-read the story of the 21-day Outward Bound course I instructed in South Africa.  I remember the intensity of that course, and thinking back to it gives me chills now.  In one journal entry, I write how I could fantasize being home, with my tv, cold orange juice, comfortable bed, and now I have it, and it’s nothing special.  I read quotes from my students and I hear their voices, and people I haven’t thought about in months are suddenly sitting right beside me.  These children of Africa, this continent that is so easily forgot because it’s not our own.  I play a South Africa cd I have, Johnny Clegg, and I get chills of hope for their country.  “Tula mama” they sing, which means calm mother.  I don’t want that life to be a vacation.  I want my whole life to be surreal, the way it was when I was listening to these students of mine share their learnings from the course.  “I see the burned bushes, and I see me before Outward Bound.  Now I’ve changed, I want to be like the new flowers that grow.”  I think life is lived best when you feel like you’re in a book worth reading.  The life I had there certainly was.  I think the whole foreigner in a foreign land is what I miss.  Right now, my plans for promoting my book fit more into the realm of non-fiction.  I’m trying to be an activist for education reform.  It’s not a role I see myself fitting so much as the random America leading 8 coloreds and 2 Xhosas into the mountains.  But, I’m starting to warm up to playing the role of a writer.  I’m realizing that my comfort at the keyboard, with a journal, writing articles, is not a comfort that everyone has. 

Writing my book has been like packing a suitcase for a long trip.  I’m pretty unorganized, because there’s so much I want to bring along.  Usually, I end up holding up my mom at the car as I run back into the house for one more thing.  That’s how I am right now.  I’m still throwing in another idea or two.  And I love that I can do it.  It’s just like writing an online journal, except a bit more permanant.  However, I am excited by the promise of people sitting down to digest my ideas.  To flip the pages.  To put it down, and pick it back up again later.  There’s so much that I packed into this book, that I’m excited to see how each idea will be read. 

So…tomorrow night I will call it official.  All further thoughts will be left to this site.  I will put a close to this chapter of my life.  Perhaps in a few months, I will think back to writing this book, as I think back now to S. Africa.  I will think back to the incredible power I had to write anything, and say anything.  I think I’ve done myself justice, and I won’t have to constantly feel like I needed to say anything more.

In fact, I’m quite confident that this book can be successful.  Whether it is or is not depends entirely on me.  It will depend on the effort I put forth, as well as my ability to push on through slow periods like now, where i’m still wondering what the hell i’m doing.  but, there’s literally thousands of college students out there who have never met a person like me, and who have never read the types of things that are coming out of my head.  and i know that there is nobody else my age running around w/ a similar book, and a similar project as me.  I have to say, I am very excited to see how the next chapter of my life unfolds…

Topic: Dumbing Down America, the need for education reform!

Right now, you’ve got republicans preaching to republicans, while protestors are protesting to protestors.   You’re got republicans telling each other exactly who bush is, and what he’s about, while democrats are telling each other who bush is, and what he’s about.  You have people who already know who they’re gonna vote or not vote for.  The only new information people are getting is how the campaigns are progressing, and i’ve just shown you my take on what the campaigns are about.

A big part of campaigns is the obvious divide between the two sides.  Obviously, there’s a lot of mistrust between the two sides, and that stems from a lack of understanding.  What exactly are they trying to say, and does it make any sense.

For the large part, these campaigns are un-educational.  They encourage people to consider black and white ideas, “this war is promoting freedom,” or “drop bush, not bombs” without discussing the grey.  They encourage people to latch onto one side with blind faith, and without needing to do anymore thinking.  They encourage us to be dumb, as in silent, and dumb, as in uneducated. 

While the criticisms go both ways, I want to illustrate my point through an interview I watched on the democracyNow! website.  Interviewing 3 republican delegates, they all believed a link between Iraq and alQaeda, something which the gov’t has admitted was a false assumption.  They have not seen Fahrenheit 9/11 because it’s not a movie that promotes family values.  Also, John McCain, who took a jab at Moore during his speech at the Republican Nat’l Convention, also admitted to not having seen the film, allowing him to paint it inaccurately, while simulataneously accusing Moore of producing a film w/out any accuracies.  The point is, a large segment of society is not willing to examine certain ideas about the gov’t.  They’re not willing to talk about it, and they’re not willing to educate themselves about it.

I fear that our school systems have not done their jobs in creating free-thinkers who are naturally cynical and able to examine the gov’t.  Bush and his supporters are free to influence this country with an attitude that “faith” is more important than thought.  Thought will reveal that the idea of the war on terror is so cloudy, that the war on Iraq can only be looked at the same way.  It’s unfortunate that Matt Lauer on the Today Show didn’t follow up on some questions, questions that will hopefully be asked in the Presidential Debate at Washington U. in St. Louis on Oct. 8th.  Because, then we might have gotten out of Bush what he meant when he said, “You can’t win the war on terror.”  Maybe someone will ask the question, “Since bringing freedom to Iraq won’t end the war on terror, isn’t it then necessary for us to invade further regimes with possible weopons of mass distruction, and regimes with evil dictators, and regimes with severe human rights violations, in order to fight terrorism?”  Maybe someone will ask, “What if it takes years to bring stability to Iraq, does that mean that we must continue to spend our budget on military action there?” or maybe someone will ask, “Mr. Bush, our country has a history of supporting regime change and supporting dictators that later we didn’t like, for example, at one time America supported Saddam Hussein.  Also, this country has a reputation around the world for being a hypocritical nation and a bully (insert historical example here).  Some say, this is in part the reason for the attacks on 9/11.  Perhaps, preventing further terrorist attacks could be done by building the reputation of America as a nation of peace and justice, a reputation which has been shattered, especially in the Middle East, as a result of not only the war on Iraq, but the inconvenience of the photos released of American’s torturing Iraqi soldiers?”

In order to educate, we must ask questions.  Real questions.  Tough questions.  When John McCain criticized Michael Moore’s movie, not because of inaccuracies, but because his movie posed questions and his own suggested answers, to me this demonstrated the desparate need for people in our country to be educated to question.  See the movie.  Tell us what’s innaccurate.  Give us your answers.  To me, criticizing Moore outright without at least thinking about his questions, represents the true dumbing down of America.