🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 25 Apr 1995, Fred Bucheit wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Apr 1995, Donald E. Simanek wrote:
> >
> > One of the reasons we've had success in the history of ideas and in
> > science, is that we have organized and comparmentalized knowledge, and we
> > have encouraged specialization. To simply say 'everything is
> > interdisciplinary' blurs important distinctions, and I think is
> > counterproductive. What we need is talented, insightful and skilled
> > specialists who are *also* generalists, and know enough of other fields
> > to interact productively with them. That's essentially what we've been
> > doing for many years, and it works. I have seen too many
> > 'interdisciplinary' courses which are little more than overviews, and
> > 'dummied down' surveys.
>
>         It "works" for whom? A very limited number, perhaps 1 or 2
> percent of the student population; the very brightest.

Only that limited number will go into sciences, and (considering the
employment situation) that seems to be all we need.

> Besides, if it
> works, why all the fuss about the results of modern education?

Because modern education doesn't result in learning much of *anything*,
and I'm not limiting this to the sciences. Further, it isn't working any
better than the traditional methods used to, for all the hoopla about
educational innovation.

> And can we
> afford, financially and socially, to educate only a select few?

We have only educated a select few for the entire history of mankind.

>      I fear we teach inversely to the way people learn. An enormous
> amount of educational research leads to the conclusion that the majority
> of people learn from the concrete to the abstract. Why do we insist on
> teaching in the other direction?

I fully accept the concrete-to-abstract sequence of learning
modes. The trouble is that students are progressing through this sequence
from concrete to abstract much too slowly. Can we find was to move them
along faster? Now, when they come to college, they are still conccrete
thinkers. (Actually, most students prefer abstractions cast in concrete :-)

One of the goals of education is to show students *how* to learn, to lead
them to new and more effective and efficient modes of learning, not to
pander to their naive modes of 'learning'. Starting by recognizing their
learning modes is fine, but too often we do things guaranteed to keep
them at the concrete stage much too long. We must develop their learning
skills. In fact, the bottom line is that's *all* we can do for students.
In recent years, we've shifted our emphases elsewhere and paid less
attention to *changing* and developing their learning strategies for the
better. Of course students have *always* resisted changing their
habits, and today they are militantly resistive, and agressively
indifferent to genuine learning.

        -- Donald