I agree with this, Judy. I would even extend it and say that our
notions of rationality need to be better integrated with our notions
of everyday life. Let me give an example. Today, in my undergraduate
seminar, we were discussing a couple of articles on the effects of
maternal employment and infant day care on children. Over the course
of the semester, my students have gotten better at summarizing the
major points of articles. Today, however, I pushed them beyond
the major ideas to the issue of their practical application by asking
them what factors they would take into consideration when advising
parents about whether or not the mother should return to work. They
were baffled--despite the fact that the entire content of these two
articles dealt with this issue. They kept remarking that "quality of
day care" was important--but quality of day care was not something
mentioned in these two articles.
It occurred to me that the students in this class had bifurcated
their learning into two "cubbyholes" as it were--the theoretical
and argumentative on the one hand, and the practical, applied, and
experiential on the other. It apparently hadn't occured to them to
ask practical questions of theoretical articles, or (I imagine) to
ask theoretical questions of applied work. Actually, I sometimes
think that they don't link "learning" (i.e., formal education) with
asking questions at all; they link it with "giving answers" which
they read from a (disembodied) text. I wonder whether the passive
mode of learning inherent in the structure of the lecture course
promotes and perpetuates this understanding of learning among those
who have not had the good fortune to learn otherwise in other
contexts. Just a thought.
Robin