[MD] Barfuersserkirche (ZMM & Dewey)

[Arlo Bensinger]

Hi Dan, All,

I find nothing to disagree with in your post, Dan. So rather than just say 
"yep, yep", I thought I'd extend three key points.

"Schools are, indeed, one important method of the transmission which forms 
the dispositions of the immature; but it is only one means, and, compared 
with other agencies, a relatively superficial means." (Dewey). I'd argue 
family, church, teams, scouts, peers, indeed we are awash in information 
that structures and informs our values. Recall the long series of essays 
"Everything I need to know I learned in/from..." and books themselves tend 
to reify normative behaviors and norms of value. The Family, I'd argue, 
also imposes a particular normative, conforming, and anticreative structure 
on the developing child. Gav made this point in his reply. Is it that The 
Academy pretends it is exempt from this? (not all, of course, as many 
post-modern scholars have called into question the role of "education", as 
Bourdieu in my last point is one example) There was an interesting theory 
advanced a while back, "Legitimate Peripheral Participation". The authors, 
Lave and Wenger, have since distanced themselves from the deterministic, 
unidirectional movement the theory supposes, but in general I think it 
provides an interesting metaphor that examines "knowledge domains" as 
"discourse communities", in the same way a baseball team or a theatre group 
also are. That is, becoming a "biologist" means nothing more than "being 
accepted into the group known as biologists", and doing so requires meeting 
group norms in language, behavior and thought. Scholarly articles are as 
much about declaring oneself "to be part of a community" as about advancing 
intellectual patterns. Now, in saying this I realize I've gone and made 
that artificial distinction between K12 and University education. I'd 
argue, however, that K12 education has oriented itself around the notion of 
"citizen" (in both a democratic and utilitarian way) as the "group" the 
students are moved towards. "Why do we have 'public education'?" is a great 
question. Nearly all answers revolve around some form of social 
reification, and place intellectual level activity as secondary or 
demonstrable only as it effects one's performance on the social level.

"The Academy isn't about educating students so much as it's about ranking 
them, ordering them, according to each other." Its a little discussed fact 
that teachers who do not submit "bell curve" grades come under the scrutiny 
of the Academy's bureaucracy. A truly gifted teacher, capable of reaching 
all her/his students and bringing them to whatever level of mastery the 
course requires, is actually punished by the foundational thought that the 
role of the Academy is not to "teach", but to "weed". Now, while this is 
not the case in every classroom of every institution, my experience in the 
Academy has shown it is quite common. In many ways, it is not The Academy's 
fault. It needs weeding. There are too many people flooding its gates for 
no real purpose, with no real interest in intellectual level activity or 
seeking truths. The skills they are here for ARE social. Jobs, interesting 
jobs with perhaps less backbreaking physical labor, and better pay, but 
jobs nonetheless. They WANT grades for the same reason Pirsig described in 
the quotes you've provided. No one has ever really told them that climbing 
to the top of a mountain is a reward in and of itself. In this way, The 
Academy is moving towards a role as "trade school", with its primary duty 
to prepare citizens for careers. Is that a good move? An inevitable one?

Back in 1996, an article came out which proposed that 
cultural-technological changes in the way we interact with information 
would lead, inevitably to the end of The Academy. The author, Eli Noam, 
wrote it for the journal "Science". Its available online at: 
http://www.asis.org/annual-96/noam.html

A quick summary with excepts. "Information institutions started about 5000 
to 8000 years ago when, at different places around the world, priests 
emerged as specialized preservers and producers of information. 
Collectively, they were also the primary information storage media of their 
societies. Because reliance on individual and group memory to transmit 
information across time and space was inefficient, recording methods 
emerged. Writers had to be trained, and schools emerged. Writing, in turn, 
led to the establishment of formal information-storage institutions. Under 
the Assyrian King Assurbanipal (668 to 627 B.C.), the royal library in 
Nineveh stocked over 10,000 works. Documents were arranged by subject such 
as law, medicine, history, astronomy, biography, religion, commerce, 
legends and hymns, each in a separate room in a compound. Wise men 
congregated there to use the information and to add to it. No doubt they 
also argued among themselves and were surrounded by disciples. Thus, 
knowledge and inquiry were already being organized along lines strikingly 
similar to today's university departments." The author proposes the 
historical functions of the university are to (1) centrally store 
information when acquisition is prohibitive, (2) as scholars came to the 
information, students came to the scholars; "teaching", (3) cross-fertilize 
from bringing together information regarding a spectrum of domains, and (4) 
social networking relating to a "rite of passage" or finding employment. 
Following his critiques of each of these points, he seems to suggest that 
the future model of The Academy will be one of small, possibly commercial, 
certifications (such as McGraw-Hill University). Specialization, costs, and 
the declining Quality of the classroom will lead to the end of The Academy.

"So I've been thinking: why not a children's book on the MOQ? Get to them 
while they're young and it's easier to twist their pliable little minds... 
er, I mean... to educate them."

A brilliant idea that deserves consideration and exploration.

I've been a little swamped this week and was not able to get back to this 
thread as I'd have liked. David Granger wrote to let me know that his book 
on Dewey and Pirsig is now available in the states. So The Academy and its 
role will be a topic on my mind for a while, and hopefully I'll get into it 
more than I've been able to this week.