[MD] 42

[John Carl]

Arlo,

[Arlo]

> One of the big problems, and one I think that Pirsig directly addresses,
> is that 'knowledge' itself has been moving from an 'objective' position to
> a 'subjective' opinion. We're in the process of swinging from one of
> Pirsig's horns to the other, but we are (as a culture) still failing to see
> the alternative Pirsig points towards. We've moved from "gravity is a fact"
> to "gravity is just an opinion".


John:

It's probably too late to go over this ground again, but I thought Pirsig
said it was *the law* of gravity that was merely in our heads.  But anyone
with two feet on the ground must admit there's something keeping them
planted there and it's not just in our heads.  The name "gravity" is
something we made up.  The phenomena of gravity is something that made us
up.

Arlo:

A large part of this has been the gradual usurping of intellect by social
> forces. The 'knowledge' taught by schools no longer has any dominance over
> social forces of belief. Evolution becomes just another "belief" that has
> no dominance over "creationism" (and in some circles, intellectual patterns
> are not just brought down to the social level, they are actively placed
> UNDER it). We are seeing a culture whose intellect has destroyed its own
> objective position (rightly so), but rather than an expansion of reason we
> are simply reverting to subjective relativism.


John:  Very astute Arlo; the argument Rigel made perhaps?  His accusation
of ZAMM was that it fed into the "whatever feels good do it" movement and
it wasn't an easy argument to answer.  Freeing the mules to kick as they
please reduces the world to a desert.  You don't mess with social patterns
lightly.

Arlo:



> I think the move towards fragmented schools is too often guided by a
> desire to place intellect in the hands of social authority, for parents to
> ensure their children are not exposed to what they would consider
> "subversive" thought, to make 'school' a place to indoctrinate social
> values.



John: the point I made to Ham is relevant here.  SOM is a social pattern.
All intellectual patterns that succeed, influence and create societies
that adopt them, "idolize" them, make them into concrete structures whereby
people live and breathe.  They become the new boss and to escape them
analytically and critically is what intellect does again and again and
again - through out our whole history it's obvious to interpret the
pattern's continuation.  We all live in a world of SOM because that world
view conquered the old social patterns and became the new one.  Meet the
new boss, same as the old boss (in that they are both "bossy")

So the disingenuous in your above is that the academic world makes a big
point of authenticating the values of their society, but other social
patterns don't see them as "above" them but for what they are - competing
social patterns.


Arlo:




> It doesn't have to be this way, and I think what you are envisioning is
> more a fragmented school built around learner needs and alternative
> assessment. I have no problem with alternative schools (charter or
> otherwise) that allow students with differing learning abilities and styles
> to excel and mature intellectually at a pace and in a place that helps them
> achieve their maximum potential.


John:  Agreed then, good.

Arlo:



> But, when alternative schools are used to backdoor social authority over
> intellect, as many (if not most) tend to be, then I have strong
> disagreement. "Home schooling", for example, is almost always talked about,
> by the parents involved, as a way to prevent their children from being
> exposed to 'values' that are not their own. You rarely hear it discussed by
> parents as a means to bring their children MORE diversity in thought and
> reason.
>


John:  I homeschooled my kids for a while for the very reason of I didn't
want them to think there was only one way to think.  I knew I'd be able to
teach them that lesson at home but schools have a hard time doing it.
Schools have got so many different thinkers that they can't afford to let
them do that.   Their response was to choose to think for themselves that
they'd rather be in a regular school!

But to this day they are pretty good at thinking for themselves and I'm
proud of that.

And again, I think this use of the term "intellect" is questionable because
it seems by that you mean a certain social authority (academia) whereas the
MoQ definition of the 4th level is more complicated than the shorthand term
we use around here - "intellectual".





>
> [John]
> Some sort of accreditation body would still be in effect so the most
> egregious errors you mention would be avoided.
>
> [Arlo]
> Sadly, I think accreditation is also falling prey to social authority, and
> is no longer a claim of "holy ground" by the Church of Reason. I mean,
> right now students are being educated in 'accredited' institutions and yet
> we are discussing the very failings of these educational structures.
>
>
John:  Good, you see it too then.  Social patterns are ubiquitious and
omni-present in all human endeavor.  Just as the only minds we know reside
in biological brains, society carries the language and structure of all our
significant thought.  When we say "intellectual" often we mean "objective"
and not objective about everything, just objective about society's opinions
of things.  Platt helped me see this by deeming the 4th level "the
individual" .  A genius is someone who generates newness.



> [John]
> I kind of like the English school system.  If you're smart enough and
> study hard you go into the Uni but if you lack college status you get a
> vocational training of some kind.
>
> [Arlo]
> My concern is here is that your words seem to reflect the idea of
> privilege (vocational is only for kids too dumb to attend college). I think
> what we need is a total scrapping of these words as we use them.
>

John:  Not at all.  I follow Pirsig's lead in his description of his
gradeless degree-less academy.  You're not an educational failure till you
die.  You can go back and try again whenever you want.  The one thing I
don't like about the English system is you  do that  testing once and for
all.  If you can always come back later then there's always hope.  But
educational status is a game humans like to play and it give them an ego
drive to try and climb higher.  One way we fail our kids today is that its
too easy to pass each grade - nobody wants you in the system for long.  But
then it's really no achievement to do so.  Who cares these days about a
high school degree?

Arlo:


> For example, if a purpose of education is cultural literacy (a valid
> argument), and its decided that kids should all read Mark Twain's The
> Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then ALL kids should read this, not just
> 'college status' kids, as if often the case in the current public system
> where 'vocational kids' are not given the same literature exposure as
> 'college' kids. The underlying idea should be that just because someone
> will be a plumber rather than a molecular biologist doesn't mean that they
> should be given any less in their humanities education.
>
>
John:  I agree there.

Arlo:


> And, conversely, vocational education is not for the dumb. I know many
> 'college status' kids who would fail out of mechanics training within a
> week. We need to think more in terms of aptitude and interest, and stop
> privileging the idea that vocational education is the last stop on the
> conveyor belt where the intellectual rejects end up.



John:  I certainly hope so!  ;)  I don't *feel* like an intellectual reject.

Arlo:


> Crawford makes this case better than I can, so I'll simply say that Shop
> Class as Soulcraft provides a good language base for how we should be
> talking about education.
>
> That said, I think it helps to talk about two purposes for education,
> rather than 'college' and 'vocational', talk about 'humanities' and
> 'career' education. Its no secret (and as your quote below indicates) that
> right now these are disjointed. We 'expect' schools to provide us with job
> skills, but colleges and the like operate on the idea that education is
> more than job skills, often to the fact that 'college' kids have no job
> skills and 'vocational' kids have no knowledge of literature, arts,
> humanities and philosophy. I think we can do both, and everyone would be
> better served if we divorced these two ideas (at least somewhat) and gave
> all people avenues to 'job skills' as well as exposure to the Church of
> Reason.
>
>
John:  I think we should teach philosophy in high school and logic in the
8th grade.    When I took logic in college I was incensed to think that all
this time I'd been going to school, ignorant of the basic structure of
argument.  And younger is a good age to teach philosophy too.  I think it,
like creativity, is a skill we have in kindergarten and gets trained out of
us for adult convenience.




> [John]
> Society doesn't just dump you, it tries to provide everybody with some
> kind of living.
>
> [Arlo]
> Stop being such a radical. ;-) What if I counter with "living is more than
> employment"?
>
>
John:  I'm pretty unemployed at the moment so I'd have to agree with you.
I've even started to define myself as "retired".  A guy can send out only
so many resumes before he goes "ok, ok.  I get the hint."



> [John provides a quote]
> "So he’ll amass a gigantic debt, miss out on four or five years that could
> be spent honing his specific skillset, and end up exactly where he could
> have been, and would have been, without college. Only now he’s 28 thousand
> dollars in the hole and half a decade behind the curve."
>
> [Arlo]
> As above, the problem here is that the expectation that the degree confers
> a labor skill, and one commensurate with cost, while the degree was never
> meant to confer economic value.


John:  That is a great point that should be reinforced more.  See?  If we
taught kids philosophy at a young age, they'd all get that.

Arlo:


> That is, the Academy was never meant to be a "jobs program". One failure
> is that we, as a culture, have lost the language to talking about this
> 'humanities' or 'liberal arts' knowledge. On the other hand, this
> humanities knowledge was never meant to be (although at times it
> historically was) a playground for wealthy, privileged people. As cost
> increases, I do think we should expect people to question why a lifetime a
> debt is worth learning philosophy, on the other hand, learning philosophy
> should not be an economic goal. So we are stuck in the middle. And I think
> eliminating tuition is the best way out this. In other words, philosophy
> should be something everyone gets but something that no one should be
> forever indentured economically when they do.
>
>
John:  Philosophy for the masses!  We shall not live by bread alone.

Arlo:


> One alternative model I've seen discussed (it has its pitfalls, including
> further entrenching the economic valuation of intellect, and creating an
> economic caste system within the Academy) is to base the credit-cost of a
> degree (and its associated courses) on the expected economic return. Thus
> an engineering degree may cost $75k, but a degree in ancient medieval
> literature would cost only $5k. Although as I mentioned, I am not a fan of
> this model, I do appreciate that at least people are starting too look for
> ways to get an humanities education to everyone without bankrupting them in
> the process.
>


The internet is offering more and more possibilities all the time.  I hear
you can get an education from MIT for free online.   But what we mean by
"college" is more collegial.  The direct interaction with a good professor
is what makes education much more than mere content.

Thanks for your time, Professor!


John