> > From: Jim Michmerhuizen <jamzen@world.std.com> LO233
> >
> <<< some deletions here >>>
> >
> > Much of the work that this group is doing is of this sort too. One of
> > the revolutions that is going on today -- there are, I suppose, hundreds or
> > thousands -- is that philosophy is freeing itself from the universities.
> >
> > Regards
> > jamzen@world.std.com
>
> Isn't that scary? People out there are now learning outside the
> classroom, and the 3-hr-credit course, and the two-to-three test semster,
> and the textbook, and... This is scary, because there is a whole
> insitution, higher education, that might be losing its future for the lack of
> learning. It is scary, because I have been in this business of business
> education for some years now, and I know how huge the HE establishment has
> become; too big to even clearly realize what might be happening to it! It
> is not only philosophy that is freeing itself from the univerisities, but
> other areas of knowledge are aslo experiencing that! Business is one of
> them. But all this process is very exciting and even pretty, when we look
> at how much learning has been been done and the energy released by it!
> Look at this discussion group, which has generated so much learning... this
> could have not been acccomplished withing the structures and walls of a
> university system!
>
> Am I making sense?
>
Yes. Lots. Earlier this evening my wife and I, over dinner with our
daughter, were talking about this very issue: the ongoing metamorphosis
of big universities into something that has _NOTHING_ to do with education,
and of business enterprises into sources of learning. (On faith, as well
as I guess some evidence, I'm not yet ready to characterize small liberal-
arts schools as subject to the same transformation as the universities. I
went to one 35 years ago, and my daughter to another just five years
ago. But I have no idea where they're headed.)
All of this too makes the participation of people like yourself, and our
other academics, doubly important. The defects of the system do not
logically distribute across its participants. I'm sure that during the
long fall of the Roman empire individuals of vision and energy continued,
here and there, to accomplish something useful within its structures,
even while they were assisting at the birth of newer ones.
Regards
jamzen@world.std.com
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- - - - There are far fewer things in heaven and earth, Horatio, - - - -
- - - - - than are dreamt of in your philosophy... - - - - -