Re: bullfights versus barnraising

From: Gary Shank (shank@duq.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 04 2001 - 05:33:03 PDT


mike says --

>I was amused by the way that our norm of valuing half baked ideas (once upon
>a time norm?, still present norm?) was transformed by the idea of dough rising
>from the inclusion of many incredients only to be pounded down again. Seems
>like our metaphor of "half baked" or "pol fabrcant" (in russian) or "ready for
>the microwave to complete" celebrates those times when someone takes a half
>baked idea and produces a tasty intellectual meal out of it which we all get
>to share in.

i'm happy to cast my vote for both half baked and dough rised thinking :-)

>
>The comments by Tannen about the inculcation of skills in finding weaknesses
>without a parallel set of practices that support creative synthesis are
>depressingly right on. I feel this especially as I see the new generations
>of grad students who KNOW that Skinner was a fool, but have not read Skinner,
>or who KNOW that Parsons was an idiot, but have never read Parsons, etc.
>Neither
>were fools. Both were almost certainly better read and more thoughtful than
>99.9% of the people who know they were fools. That kind of a-historical
>and shallow scholarship is reason enough (and there are many others) for
>the public to beware of academic wisdom.
>

it goes far deeper than skinner and parsons, alas... if the goal of
liberal education is to free the learner from the tyranny of being born at
a particular place and time, then we are increasingly becoming the jailers
of contemporary culture. not once in my own formal education was i exposed
to the thoughts of some of the great minds of all time, including but not
limited to -- duns scotus, james joyce, lao tsu, and if we exclude those
folks who were merely mentioned, like aquinas and confucious, then the list
stretches out endlessly...

maybe we can free up the poor kids who are learning to be computer clerks
by exposing them to boethius and sun tzu, and let their future bosses
wallow in the watered down shallows of contemporary thought, instead of
trying to play cultural catch up. the good news is that there are
tremendous classics sites on the internet that can easily be used. here
are three of my personal favorites:

http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/

http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/

http://www.ccel.org/

gary
shank@duq.edu



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