Are spartan living conditions helpful for learning?: IHE contributor
July 25, 2017
“Tour a contemporary American college campus and the guide will apologize for anything without the accoutrements of a yuppie condo,” writes Elizabeth Pardoe, who contrasts her experience of current university housing with the spartan conditions she faced when she attended PSE. The author reflects on the extent to which bare housing conditions might contribute to or detract from the educational experience. Pardoe notes that while monasteries once worked to strip away physical comforts in order to encourage learning, “it seems we now attempt to do the reverse. We attempt to give everyone the same ‘stuff’ the wealthy expect in their surroundings as a prerequisite for engaging in a life of the mind.” Inside Higher Ed
