We’re hosting Roger Schank here at BYU for a couple of days. He’s a brilliant, fascinating thinker. Among other things he insists that learning begins and ends with GOALS. If you don’t have explicit goals in mind when you attempt to teach (help someone learn) you’re really wasting your time . . . But faculty members generally teach students what they want to teach them because that’s the behavior the higher ed system rewards and reinforces.

IMHO, BYU is actually moving very productively in this direction. Evidence? http://learningoutcomes.byu.edu.