I'm in an anthropology lecture where the professor who taught in the department for 35+ years is allowed to largely not believe in grades and basically dictate answers to students during the exam. I personally used the lectures as an introduction to a new to me topic, but a large number of students sign up for the lectures having found from their peers about an easy GPA booster. Some didn't listen to the lectures; many skipped it entirely.
Lecturing would be left to professional speakers backed by a writing team and subject-matter experts, filmed remotely and either sold to schools as materials on the free market, or produced for the public by government media arms such as the BBC. If anyone had a question about the material that couldn't be answered by the lecture, the books, the rest of the class, by the "teacher"'s Socratic deduction, etc., the school would have tutors on-call as well (by remote from a tutoring group, or locally as a service of alumni.) There would be no segregated "classes" or "classrooms", but rather an integrated environment more akin to a combination library/study-hall, with gatherings for people working on the same class of problem at the same time, etc.
In fact, there wouldn't really be a need to "graduate" at all, or to "register" for specific semesters. As long as you could get a print-out at any time proving you had 100%-ed the problems relevant to the job you're applying for, that would be all you would need. You would be able to show up one day, leave for years, then come back and resume your studies as if you had never left. In fact, done this way, people would probably stop considering themselves to be "in school", but rather just say that they "go learning" in the same way one would "go hiking" or "go to yoga." A life-long hobby, in other words—just the way an education should be :)
Ah... but if only.
Right now, teachers act like role models for kids, but they're an intrinsically bad fit: kids want to see their role models doing the things they want to do, but teachers simply teach. Ideally, role models would be "visiting fellows", perhaps alumni, of a completionist school, psyching kids up about doing some thing or other such that they see school as a step toward doing that thing. Without that, school is meaningless, and it's no wonder kids aren't interested in it.
A lot of people feel the same way too about PhDs teaching, but universities are so huge they're like governments unto themselves full of traditions and factions and general bickering. I could really see value in the system you propose.
This is actually the basic idea of an amazingly interesting book I read recently, _Good Video Games and Good Learning_ (http://www.amazon.com/Video-Learning-Literacies-Digital-Epis... and see also http://www.amazon.com/Video-Games-Learning-Literacy-Second/d...)
1. Grades need to be eliminated, but not evaluations. This teacher sounds misguided to me. The teacher needs to foster an environment that will generate curiosity and interest. The teacher needs to respect the students and their views through meeting regularly with them, listening to their ideas, goals, and dreams, and discuss it with them and provide feedback. Lastly the teacher needs to provide verbal and written evaluations on how each student is doing in their own journey in learning about anthropology.
Expecting students who know nothing about anthropology to all of a sudden be interested and fascinated by it and care by listening to a guy talk to them for an hour a few times a week is ridiculous.
2. An anthropology lecture should not exist at a level where most students don't care about anthropology. (Lecture courses for the most part shouldn't exist for general courses but that's a separate issue).
None of these things, in my opinion, have anything in particular to do with education. Education is an action you take (upon yourself) because of your goals; you're talking about the meta-process that causes you to set your goals in the first place, and to revise them as you go.
As an analogy, think of something every teenager is driven to do on their own: learn to drive. They will study, take the exam, study some more if they've failed, etc., because they have an actionable goal in mind (driving around, easily getting to friends' houses, etc.) and learning is a means to achieving this goal.
What students need are role models who can give them, and demonstrate to them, actionable goals. Some of the sciences make this easy—a paleontologist just has to point at a bone exhibit in a museum and say "kids, study and then you'll not only be finding these, but you'll know why it's important that we find them"—but every field can be reduced in a similar way with a clear, big-picture-focused mind (except maybe mathematics: that's pure blue-sky fun that only gets purposed after-the-fact.)
This is sort of the difference between unit tests, and integration tests based on user stories. Your role models should be giving you goals—stories for you to complete—and also evaluating how close you are to reaching them. You should be giving yourself tasks, which you can implement through education, and which can then be algorithmically verified as complete (by the school), with regressions caught and reinforced, etc. The tasks, when summed up, should give you something that meets the goal—if not, you need new/better/more tasks.
We're dealing with semantics here, however I disagree that education is mainly an action you take upon yourself. Ideally it would be, however we are far from that being a reality for the general population. Today one receives an education dictated (partly by you), however mostly by others (schools, universities). The specific action under your control is to learn. Learning can only be done by you (because of your goals), however supplying the means or environment to learning can be the job of someone else (to assist you in your learning process, assist you in your education).
> What students need are role models...
That's exactly what I was trying to say. I believe the teacher should act as the role model. An anthropologist who could inspire you and generate the curiosity and interest would be the ideal role model for a captivated future anthropology student.
That's how I felt about that professor. He's sparked interest in a new to me topic. As for the waste of money, I'm not certain how the university system works outside of Canada, but here at UToronto, after you've picked 3 or more courses, the fees for the term become flat, i.e. you can pick 4 or 7 courses, and the total is the same. I personally think taking 5 purely major related courses at a university with so many potential topics of interest to explore is complete madness, so the flat fee system works quite well, IMO.
Even if it ends up costing you more than you'd like, in case of a student loan exceeding $7,000 annually, the Canadian Government forgives anything above that amount, which is great if one is living alone and has to pay rent and bills.
Add to that all the possible term grants you can obtain, based on your marks, or in case of me, a low income, and it starts to make more sense to explore things a bit while at university.
While a bit off topic, I just wanted to justify taking seemingly unrelated courses for personal and not necessarily career related gain under the current education system.