On the Dangers of Systematic Preference

[wolven7]

Yesterday, Amelapay posted this from Larry Sanger's Blog: "Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?"

Now, I don't agree with everything, there, but I just want to talk about what I almost always want to talk about in these debates. To do so, let me ask this question: Mr Sanger, you do realise you're engaging in the exact same problematic generalisation (ie "Traditional Learning Modes Are Good") of which you're accusing the "Geek Anti-Intellectuals?" Now I know that in many cases, having this similarity of thought process levelled against you isn't going to change anyone's mind, but I have to at least hope that someone will stop, take a deep breath, and realise that they're being a fucking idiot.

Not everyone needs to go to college. That format simply doesn't work for everyone, and the basic fact of the matter is, systematizing and formalising the modes of knowledge acquisition into reading, rote memorisation, etc, will change a person's innate educational predispositions. Yes, sometimes they need changing, but it should be a bolstering and diversification of strengths, not a complete indifference to the muliplicity of needs.

I'm sorry, Mr Sanger, was that a narrow reading of your thesis? Do you, perhaps, not feel that everyone ought to learn in the exact same way? Well then... Well then.

There is a wider, more nuanced swath of support for technologically-augmented educational practices than is countenanced, in that article, and while it could easily (and truly) be said that Google and Wikipedia allow for shortcuts in learning, and thus have the potential to degrade the character and quality of human knowledge. But the same was said about Writing, in Homer's time.

Over all, all I'm saying, here is: People learn differently, and every technological advance is at some point decried as the downfall of human knowledge. But every technology has inherent in it the potential for its own misuse. What I'd recommend we do, more than take the provocative hardline, is figure out the actual fucking middle path. Because, to paraphrase Mr Sanger, the real-world applications of our attitudes are rarely all or nothing. It's usually some combination of all of them.

Good morning. Think well today.

Comments

augmentation not mutilation

[raoin.livejournal.com]

most especially i dont understand his dogmatic need to stress "the classics" as if all value in literature stopped with the Greek philosophers... or perhaps he defines "the classics" as all books written before 1920... it's vague... what isnt vague is that he gives no support to modern literature, to modern written form as a propegator of value to culture. i've read the classics and i draw from his commentary that such an act is "rare"? i cannot say that i didnt learn anything from doing such reading, quite the contrary, but i feel as though "the classics" are merely the tip of the iceberg. If i stuck to only "the classics" i would be very poorly read indeed.

i also feel as though his greivances are merely a reaction to a recent spate of cultural reactions: responses to the economic downturn that will most certainly shape our generation (those in their current 20s and 30s) and the following generations as well. Of course there are a lot of people out there saying that college is worthless. We've basically got an entire generation of people who've just been told that they went into debt for nothing other than "good feelings" and "knowledge". Knowledge is wonderful but it does not put bread on the plate. The emphasis on applied knowledge that our generation has suddenly become infactuated with (like the growing urban agricultural movement) is a direct response to finding out that our "intellectualism" will not pay the bills. It is wonderful, wonderful truly wonderful, that i have a masters degree in Religious Studies, i think it made me a more critical thinker and a more tolerant person, but it has nothing at all to do with how i pay my way in our society.

His response to such social moods is to believe, seemingly wholeheartedly, that all people everywhere have decided that education is worthless. and to carry this much to far in believing that all these same people would rather not memorize anything at all, because obviously memorization is the only way to "learn" something. i realize he was putting forth a bunch of scenarios in his writing to demonstrate a slippery-slope, but frankly i'd rather have heard him talk about the subject matter at hand in a calm, rational way: exploring its potential and then suggesting solutions, rather than running about like Chicken Little claiming that the sky is falling. His words hinder rathan than help.

Re: augmentation not mutilation

[wolven.livejournal.com]

If i stuck to only "the classics" i would be very poorly read indeed.

Exactly. His phrasing seems to say that there will never be anything past The Classics and within the context of the argument implies that everyone who tries to create something of equal or greater value to said at all, let alone via systems other than those he outlines as important, are anti-intellectual. This is... flawed.

It is wonderful, wonderful truly wonderful, that i have a masters degree in Religious Studies, i think it made me a more critical thinker and a more tolerant person, but it has nothing at all to do with how i pay my way in our society.

Unfortunately true. Less and less, these days, does our learned knowledge of things like Theory and Method actually end up applying to our so-called practical lives. Which is not to say that that's how it ought to be, merely that it's the way it is. AS you say, some solutions for that state of affairs would have been more helpful.

His words hinder [rather than] than help.

Precisely that.

[karishi.livejournal.com]

One discussion I had along this line was with Action, a peddler of warez digital and addictive.

He would rather vehemently argue that yes, the overstated mission statement offered up by Sanger actually was the truth. That the most valuable things he ever learned he learned on the internet and by hanging out with wealthy folk.
The core of his principle, I think, is that society is evolving so quickly now that any institution of learning will, by its nature as an institution, be rigid enough that even if it teaches facts (many of which are quickly obsolete) it will simultaneously teach a stifling and ultimately fatal rigidity.
Never mind the number of innovators with college degrees, who used those degrees to innovate. Tesla, for instance.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

The problem, I think, is thinking that any mode of knowledge acquisition applies to all people. How fucking narrow is that? I mean, really.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Richard Garfield and Reiner Knizia, PhDs, make me vaguely consider getting higher degrees in mathematics.

[catvincent.livejournal.com]

Do we even dare to get into little things like the elitism, the ignorance of even the more reasonable post-modern criticisms of the Grand Narrative and the sheer bloody narrow-mindedness of how gatekeepers define 'The Classics'?

Short form - cry some more, n00b.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Agreed, almost all the way around, but especially on the classics point. I think that was one of the most ill-articulated parts of his whole argument. Bluh.