Some members of the Duke community chafe at the use of The Chronicle editorial pages to discuss trivial issues like dating and sororities, calling instead for discussion of politics, foreign policy and world affairs. But this is wrongheaded for several reasons, the first being readership. Duke students are not superficial, and so when they want to read about international issues they consult the editorial pages of major papers and the innards of scholarly journals where experts reign. But when they want to read about Duke they pick up a Chronicle. Since we are yet to see a sweatshop on campus besides Teer, or find any oppressed Palestinians between the Bryan Center and the Blue Zone other than the Bread and Kabob delivery guy, these issues are best left to others who have long since abandoned adolescence. Our stay on this odd planet is far too short to squander reading shrill rants about globalization by students too young to rent a car.
Yet this is not to say that there is no place for concern for serious issues in The Chronicle--quite the contrary. Recommended changes must be local, relevant to the lives of students, and achievable and practical. One such opportunity presents itself to us this very day.
In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a program worthy of our mimicry. MIT president Charles Vest explained the mission of the new system at commencement in 2002. "Next fall, the MIT faculty will launch its MIT OpenCourseWare initiative--a program that will make the basic educational materials for 2,000 of our subjects available on the web--available to anyone anywhere free of charge. Why would we do this? Because we see it as part of our mission: to help raise the quality of higher education in every corner of the globe." By going to www.mit.edu and following the link OCW under Education, anyone with the desire and a computer can access authentic MIT course materials. (Using this site as a supplemental resource is of inestimable benefit to the GPA, even for lofty Duke students. Nearly every course you can think of is represented, featuring lecture notes, syllabi, problem sets, practice tests and--in some cases--video lectures. And, quite often, the books used at Duke and MIT are identical.)
Think of OpenCourseWare as Blackboard minus the exclusivity (Duke students cannot access materials from courses at Duke in which they are not enrolled) and the neo-Soviet aesthetics. It is unspeakably beautiful. But even more astonishing is the potential this local project has to produce meaningful social, political, economic and religious betterment, both in the United States and beyond.
Granted, the internet is not yet a ubiquitous presence in the world, but even a small fraction of the population with access in a repressive country like Iran can have a major impact on shaping ideological trends, not to mention the possible economic consequences for nations like the United States where many people own computers and everyone--through public libraries--has internet access. Such educational resources have the potential to improve the knowledge of the workforce by affording every American access to an elite university education, and in so doing allow people to cultivate new skills and find higher-paying jobs--or, better still, create jobs themselves.
But most importantly, the MIT initiative is a monument to truth against the enduring human lust for the irrational. By allowing global citizens, however few in number, the opportunity to view the doctrines they are taught to accept on faith in juxtaposition with the sum of human knowledge, as endorsed by a prestigious university that makes scads of cool stuff, there will at least be some chance that the world may be spared annihilation through conflicting religious claims to absolute Truth, though I am not optimistic on this count.
But the crusade cannot be waged from MIT alone: other universities must join in as well for it to be truly effective, and this is where we can get involved. From its inception, the OpenCourseWare initiative was meant to inspire other universities to democratize their educational resources, but to date the response has been tepid, which one would hope is for financial reasons. Yet considering the possible benefits of such a system: equal access to higher education, economic growth, attenuated religious fundamentalism, and a better grasp of reality (the ultimate aim of knowledge), wiser men than this writer argue that the benefits far outstrip the birthing pains, which could be further eased by way of grants and corporate sponsorship.
And Duke students, too, have much to gain personally. As members of an elite community whose ticket of admission costs dearly, being able to look through class materials here before enrolling has the potential to dramatically change the way we select courses, which in turn may inspire evolution in career plans and life goals.
Talk to your friends and teachers. Molest your DSG representatives. Join the Campus Crusade for Cleverness, which in lobbying for the posting of all Duke course materials on the Internet has the potential to be something meaningful for the world--and for you. Think of OCW as a happy synthesis of business, social activism and self-interest. It is businesslike in the fact that it is efficient, constructive and reasonable: it can affect a large number of people dramatically for a relatively small amount of money, and is reasonable in that it is not silly like proposed divestment of the Duke endowment from companies like Caterpillar, whose bulldozers happen to be used in demolishing Palestinian homes. (I submit that it would be much more reasonable to divest from Hostess, whose products are used daily to greater international detriment.)
Unlike such social movements, MIT's initiative is not driven by promiscuous idealism toward absurd ends; it is brilliantly devoid of ideology, presenting empirical evidence and leaving interpretation to the observer. Reason, ultimately, yields science, which disrobes Truth--whose precepts are omnipotent. And if any of these precepts says that the world is a mere 6,000 years old or that a murderous suicide bomber encounters ten-dozen compliant virgins upon arrival in paradise, I, for one, am a monkey's uncle.
Matt Gillum is a Trinity junior. His column appears every other Tuesday.
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