tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post2593033727562401249..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: EducationAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-15045739384667434232016-11-08T11:08:03.772-05:002016-11-08T11:08:03.772-05:00I noticed early on that a temporary devotion to a ...<i>I noticed early on that a temporary devotion to a subject in the humanities could make you an expert very quickly. I would talk about an historical or literary topic with a person who taught it at the college level and sense immediately that they did not know what I did. </i><br /><br />I have acquired a certain amount of knowledge on Latin America. Similar to your experience, I have been able to take apart what lefty professors have written on Latin America, to point out facts they have neglected- if they ever knew them. <br /><br />I have recently been reading a book by the Chilean exile Ariel Dorfman, whose literary output and op-eds for the last 40 years have focused on what harm Pinochet did to Chile and to Dorfman's lefty dreams.[He was a red diaper baby, it turns out.His parents named him Vladmiro. His father was a UN bureaucrat based in NYC who got booted out of the US for lending too much support to US Reds who were under surveillance around the time of the Rosenberg executions.] I FINALLY found a passage where Dorfman acknowledged that no, Allende's coalition did not have the support of the majority and that this lack of majority support was crucial in the decision to stage a coup: "We could blame the CIA...the military, all we wanted but they would never have prevailed if we had been able to get the majority of Chileans behind our reforms." RichardJohnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07490819511630683969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-21113962592183070862016-11-07T19:42:42.755-05:002016-11-07T19:42:42.755-05:00In order to write the chapters on church history a...In order to write the chapters on church history and on differences between churches I had to do a bit of background research, in particular about the catholic and the orthodox. Plenty of other folks knew it already, of course, but I confess that "Westminster Abbey" was just a phrase until the history sunk in a bit--repurposed; got it--borrowing sanctity; got it. Lots of details in stories had slid by me--references to usages not common in Baptist churches.<br /><br />A smattering can hint at what you don't know. <br /><br />It seems such impoverishment to see people so disconnected from their past. As jaed says, if you cannot even read Shakespeare in context of his time, how are you going to read Wole Soyinka in _his_ context?jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-55876093526308623552016-11-07T18:30:47.747-05:002016-11-07T18:30:47.747-05:00I was recently depressed to receive a missive from...I was recently depressed to receive a missive from my alma mater, discussing how the required humanities course will (almost certainly) be reworked, with the pervasive addition of "race, class, and gender" oppression-studies material. Much is being made of the fact that the class introduces the student to the heritage of Western civilization; much indignation about the fact that "there are things worth studying other than Dead White Males, y'know!"<br /><br />The point of studying the thought of one's own civilization is that it grounds one in one's own cultural reality; from that standpoint, studying the thought of other civilizations—in their own terms, as it should be, rather than an adjunct or ornament or "break" from the West—becomes much more likely to lead to productive thought. Someone who has studied the traditional humanities is prepared to study other civilizations in depth, using similar techniques. Indeed, arguably, this is the only way to gain any real understanding of a civilization, short of being born and growing up in it.<br /><br />Instead they're talking about dumping some of the primary writings in favor of fashionable secondary and tertiary sources "analyzing" various periods in terms of current obsessions, reading textbooks about Plato instead of Plato. And throwing in a few random items such as "a book about Muhammed" as a sort of herbal seasoning, with no attempt to study Muslim civilization in any depth, and no attempt to relate it to Western civilization.<br /><br />It is all so direly missing the point of such a class that it makes me want to cry.jaedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03328666344764784829noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-70823084688699656422016-11-06T21:31:17.868-05:002016-11-06T21:31:17.868-05:00Taleb does exempt physics, mathematics, engineerin...Taleb does exempt physics, mathematics, engineering, and some other direct science study and employment. As for the humanities, yes that's the theory, that the survey level courses provide some structure, some possible analogies, and some teasers. I had always thought so. Certainly there is some of that. But now I wonder if it is greatly overrated.<br /><br />I will say that anything firmly outside of our own time and space is a plus, giving us some objectivity. One of my objections to modern knowledge is that it is so quickly makes all other eras a subsidiary of modern social thought: projecting modern racial issues, feminism, economic theories, LGTB advocacy, and economic theories back onto earlier times. In particular, to discredit anything that was good about any place that contributed to the development of the west. You find this attitude pretty much assumed in NPR stories, for example, as if it does not occur to them that any other POV could exist.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-28397074241454428512016-11-06T17:04:37.511-05:002016-11-06T17:04:37.511-05:00E D Hirsch made a name for himself in the 1980'...<i>E D Hirsch made a name for himself in the 1980's by advocating a "cultural literacy" as a shared common knowledge to enable communication. I have thought until quite recently that this is an excellent way to go. I now see it is restricted to the middlebrows.</i><br /><br />I think this underrates the idea. It's true that you can be "culturally literate" in this sense while having no depth in any of it—a jack of all trades, a master of none—but the lack of depth doesn't follow as a necessity. You can be culturally literate, with a passing acquaintance with a great deal, and with the kind of depth you describe earlier in a few areas of special interest.<br /><br />Indeed, this is the best case, since no one can have that kind of depth in all areas. The broad acquaintance gives you an extensive list of areas that you might become sufficiently interested in to explore in depth, and a general set of references that let you relate one area to another, and that's useful in becoming well-educated in your field(s) of interest, and all of that is useful. (Being able to understand a reference to Plato's opinion of poets without having it explained for you is just a side benefit.)<br /><br />For that matter, this works fractally, at all scales. If you are interested in algebraic topology, it will be of enormous benefit to have learned something about other subfields of mathematics, even though you can't go into much depth with most of them: your acquaintance with the methods and ways of thinking used in other subfields will enrich (enormously!) your work in your own specialized corner. Same sort of thing with history, or any other field of study: the general survey-level knowledge of other periods and specialties gives you context and comparisons for your studies in Civil War military history.jaedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03328666344764784829noreply@blogger.com