John, Miranda, and others,
You wrote:
>I agree with your concerns Marion. It left me (on first reading) asking what
>you'd suggest instead. Would it help to not so much criticise as to ask "is
>there some truth in this additional proposal?"?
Others said pretty much the same thing.
An absolutely fascinating response (!!!!!!), particularly after my having
read just a few minutes before a posting about information "outside the
paradigm" being perceived as mere "noise."
Look again at what I wrote in my original posting. After a brief
discussion of the reasons why the traditional academic disciplines are, in
my view, incapable of providing an acceptable general education, I said
(I'll capitalize for emphasis):
> In Western culture, in our attempt TO UNDERSTAND EXPERIENCE, WE
>ROUTINELY "TAKE REALITY APART" BY ATTENDING TO TIME, LOCATION,
>PARTICIPANT ACTORS, ACTION, AND CAUSE, AND THE SYSTEMIC
>RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THESE FIVE ASPECTS OF OUR PERCEPTIONS OF
>REALITY. THESE, NOT THE TRADITIONAL ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES, ARE THE
>PROPER SUBDISCIPLINES OF A SINGLE, INTEGRATED, INTELLECTUALLY
>MANAGEABLE GENERAL EDUCATION CURRICULUM.
There, as clearly as I know how to say it, is my alternative to the
disciplines--a single, five-component discipline, an approach to
segmenting reality as as old as language itself.
Perhaps there's something wrong with how I phrased it, but if not, what
may be displayed here in the failure to see that I followed my negative
criticism with a positive proposal is yet another example of the
difficulty--perhaps, sometimes, even the impossibility--of processing
information outside our expectations. Our assumptions about the role of
the disciplines in understanding reality may be so deeply imbedded in our
thinking that words setting out an alternative literally have no meaning.
But that's not new. The biggest names in education in America with whom
I've corresponded (with perhaps one exception) appear to read the words
but attach no meaning to them. They either just blank out, or focus on
some peripheral aspect of my argument, or, through elaborate mental
contortions, decide that I'm merely echoing what Dewey or Counts or some
other theorist said decades ago. (My brother tells me they're carrying so
much baggage they haven't a free hand to pick up anything more.)
I'm not plowing old terrain in some different direction. Believe me. The
seemingly innocuous move of formally replacing, for purposes of general
education, the traditional disciplines with our "natural" way of
segmenting reality would result in a student performance explosion far
beyond the most optimistic predictions of what it's possible for the young
to do with their minds.
Thanks for caring.
Marion Brady
-- GMBrady@aol.com