Where issues related to education and the workplace are discussed. Please
note that these issues have been given a heavy airing in Ira Steinberg's
Ohio State University Press book called RALPH BARTON PERRY ON EDUCATION
FOR DEMOCRACY. Perry strives for overall balance, and does not emphasize
Ray's views. However they are consistent with them.
Perry's highest order goal was what Rol mentions, "education for
citizenship", but he saw this as consisting of three primary subgoals,
which correspond to particular time periods, and which balance what many
see as conflicting goals.
I have taken that model and converted it into a formula for university
redesign, in which the present university components are augmented, and in
which none of them are eliminated.
This same model is relevant to Ray Evans Harrell's poignant remarks about
higher education and the role of the performing arts. I can relate to
those strongly, since one daughter studied oboe and is now a performer,
and one son studied French Horn, but finally gave up the symphony life to
go into computing. There life experiences all correlate heavily with
Ray's contributions.
Ray's remarks are, in my opinion, fully consistent with the Perry model of
education, especially as implemented in my university redesign which
stresses strong interactions among the three goals and the three parts of
the Great University, the latter concept being grounded in two frames:
Perry's framework of the goals of education, and my framework of how to
manage complexity. One example I use repeatedly in my framework on
complexity has to do with effective graphical communication. In that
arena, I strive to contrast the wonderful century-crossing,
culture-crossing of the graphical language of music, which embodies the
technical, the humanistic, the temporal, and the person in a way that none
of today's software languages exhibit. There is a lot they could learn
from studying just musical languages, but alas that is far from the minds
of computer "science" departments.
-- John N. Warfield Johnwfield@aol.com