MOOC Philosophy?

In a recent New York Review of Books piece the author writes about the film Ivory Tower, a work commenting on contemporary higher education. At one point he makes the observation:

At the heart of the MOOC model is the idea that education is a mediated but unsocial activity. This is as strange as the idea—shared by ecstatic communities of faith—that the discovery of truth is a social but unmediated activity.

 This is a truly powerful observation. It is McLuhan in insight. It is the essence of the "peer review" process.

Do Instructor have value, besides the "stars". My classic example is Lander and Biology, he has no equal. But what of those others whose influence made us what we are today. I recall two, both in my secondary school, both sort of Mr Chips, at two extremes. Brother Edward set my mathematics career aflight, and Mr Brown made me think. Mr Brown made us work in Middle English, do Chaucer, see the future through past. Brother Edward taught how mathematics really was, discovering cause and effect.

Would a Lander on video have replaced them? No. They were essential. Without Mr Brown taking us for drinks before my final French exam, I would never have become fluent in French, and as for Brother Edward, he created the ability to "see" the answer.

The group, the mass, the consensus of opinion, it is useless, it is the insight of the individual into something new. The person willing to use their intellect to see the world in a different manner is the person who creates a difference. Truth is all too often destroyed by the social and unmediated activity. The individual is destroyed, the individual is silenced by the opinions of those without knowledge. Worse those without knowledge are empowered to apply their ignorance as truth. That is the evil in "peer reviews" by those without knowledge. Just a thought for the end of July.