My Own & As a Subject of Study
By the time I was a high school sophomore, we had world history. I was then fifteen and discovered that while I loved history, Jimmy Dickinson was probably the only other one in our whole class of sixty people that had the same regard for it that I did. The rest complained that history was boring, difficult, pointless, and stupid. History did not do any good for anyone, they said.
These attitudes surprised me, and I wondered at the vast difference between them and me: I found history exciting, far easier than geometry or almost anything else, pertinent and personal, and altogether enlightening. What made the difference?
If memory serves, I did not differentiate between subjects in my early years. Whatever I read seemed all connected, all aspects of the same mysterious need to know, all feeding the same imagination. Whether myths and legends, Oz books, stories of King Arthur or Robin Hood, biographies of authors, chemists, or explorers, The Book of Knowledge (1949) that Dad bought for us Sween kids, they all collided together in my mind. I think when we left self-contained classrooms, except for music or penmanship, and went to Junior High, discreet subjects emerged in the separated classrooms of seventh grade.
We had Miss Louella Watson for junior high social studies. She seemed old to us, plain and always dressed in blue, but I suppose she was in her fifties then. She could be stern, noted for running the silent detention room all those years. I admired her teaching, especially of American History, even if I never did grasp why Andrew Jackson was her favorite president. He seemed then as now always a roughshod spoiler to me.
She made history live for me and I reveled how different the stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were in her class from the few incidents we had heard repeatedly in the elementary years. I remember a test of hers in which she passed out pictures each with a number; we had sheets filled with the corresponding numbers. Besides the appropriate number on our sheet, we identified the content of the picture – proclaiming the Declaration of Independence, Conestoga wagon, panning for gold, or whatever. I think I did very well on that test; at least I enjoyed it.
Study halls were in the library, a mix of all upper grades put together in one room because they did not have a class that hour. With the large number of people, probably 50-60 at a time, we were under the control of the monitor. Chiefly you could not wander until the last 15-20 minutes unless to use the encyclopedias. I was reading books in the Landmark Series in those days, rather introductory biographies and histories, but opening doors for me. After I had read a book, I wanted to check it in the encyclopedia: I would go from Americana to Britannica to Colliers looking up the particular subject, related facts and cross references. When allowed to leave our seats, other dashed for the magazines, and I went to the book stacks.
Mrs. Charlotte Whitney, the school librarian, had been the city’s public librarian when I was a younger child. However, when widowed she went to the University of Minnesota in order to be licensed for the school. Mrs. Lois Palmer succeeded her at the public library. Both these women were friends of my mother and naturally took a close personal interest in me. They were always willing to talk about what I had just read, what I thought, and then recommended related books for me, held books for me, and in the case of the public library obtained interlibrary loan for me although in those days that service was specifically limited to adults. Eventually, I was reading at an adult level and most of my book reading came from the public library or books I bought.
When I look back at it from later years, all that reading caused the turning point in my life. Though I did not realize it at the time, I was learning more from reading than I was from any class. The pivotal book became Gods, Graves and Scholars (1st ed., 1951), a book about the history of archaeology. I had thought to be a scientist, possibly a chemist: Robert Boyle was my hero, and I had written a paper on him for Mr. Duane Armstead in the 7th grade. However reading about the sciences was one glorious thing, actually doing science and math was messy and tedious. Marek’s book helped me think through my real interests so that I gravitated from science to history via the temporary consideration of my life as an archaeologist.
I wanted to be a historian. Of course, I had no idea what a historian did except write histories, but whatever it was, I wanted it. I could not get enough of history. From then onwards, I read almost exclusively histories, especially remote history – the more antique the better – along with a slew of historical novels. Waltari, Schoonover, and Shellabarger were my favorites, but also The Count of Monte Cristo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, War and Peace and other novels with a historical setting.
For fun, I was tracing the ancestry of Queen Elizabeth I, something that I dithered over for several years given that the resources I had were all secondary and limited. Recently, a friend of mine from elementary through college years and after, remembered that in high school I knew the names of all the kings and queens of England from the time of the Norman Conquest to the present, both in order and by their successive relationships. Well, we have our specialties; I could not claim the same affinity for the presidents of the United States. It was not until I had American History from Dr. Erling Jorstad at St. Olaf that I experienced U.S. history as exciting as the days of yore.
About 1955, I had discovered Machiavelli’s The Prince (the Ricci / Vincent edition, 1954, in paperback) available at the local drugstore. This was the first book I read in which someone was doing something with historical knowledge and I began to write simultaneously the novel Frivovla the Well-Attended in which Prince Frivovla reads The Prince and develops a lifelong philosophy of basilaeism (on the duties of monarchy) which she exercises through various episodes of her life.
In 1957, I attended a Luther League assembly in Minneapolis and browsed the books being sold there. I bought Now or Never: some reflections on the meaning of the fullness of time by Walter Charles Schnackenberg, who was then a professor of history at Pacific Lutheran College. This 79 page booklet, selling for 50 cents, was number 4 of volume 1 in The Fullness Series, published by the International Young People’s Luther League. When I look back at it now, I am astounded that in those days, the Evangelical Lutheran Church aimed this kind of literature at teenage readers, despite the advanced concepts and German quotations. I had never read or imagined anything like it.
Schnackenberg warns in his preface that this book covers a difficult topic in a manner that is difficult to accomplish. Nevertheless, “this contribution seeks to lay out some working hypotheses on the approaches to the bastion of meaningful truth; it seeks to provoke discussion of relevant problems among interested Christians; it seeks to furnish for young people, directly or indirectly, a few signposts which will indicate where the battlefield is located, and to point out some weapons of the Christian faith which might be suitable in the struggle against disillusion and frustration as we find it in these times and these places.” Whew! I doubt that I knew at that time what “hypotheses” meant, but my practice for years had been to list every word I did not know and look them up. Besides the vocabulary, I could not guess what all the fuss was about. Weapons? Disillusion? These times?
Schnackenberg gave me a definition of history in the universal sense – all that has happened – and of history in the professional sense – concern with the past of what has happened and its sequence to the present, but not with the future that is outside our knowledge. Qualifications followed: not only is knowledge of history in its universality impossible, but human reduction of history into a subject of study is also necessarily limited. Here comes the part that has stuck with me all these years. History is the interpreted fragment of the discovered fragment of the recorded fragment of the selected fragment of the remembered fragment. Of course, I know now that the remembered fragment is prone to error and partiality, depending on viewpoint.
From that reading, I humbled myself in the face of all history that I took as the study before me and as the universal of all the history of existence that loomed behind me. I did not call history discovery at that time, but daily discovery was my experience. The larger part of Schnackenberg’s task in illuminating the “historical situation” puts history as the sequence in time within its eschatological and Christian contexts. I believe that I accepted that explanation without fully realizing its import, but such an account moved me along to further consideration of the philosophy of history.
Enamored as I was of Nietzsche as a college freshman, my reading of him included The Use and Abuse of History, translated by Adrian Collins (1957). Nietzsche’s contrary views always startled and made grasping them difficult so that I spent a lot of time with him that first year of college, even wrote a long paper on him to inform and resolve my thinking and to practice research reporting based on sources. Even then I was not sure of my own understanding. However, clearly just as in Thus Spake Zarathustra where Nietzsche expects more out of life than the ordinary, in this essay on history, he wants more enlightenment, utility and impact out of history. Nietzsche found the historicism of his day stultifying without transformative value. “Only strong personalities can endure history; the weak are extinguished by it” (1957, p. 32). Living up to Nietzsche’s visions proved quite a challenge.
Next came the call of Hegel’s Reason in History, translated by Robert S. Hartman (1953). By reading Hegel, I came to a fuller understanding of the Nietzschean reaction. Though Hegel declared that we must take history as it is, for him theory and theology overflowed that history and the evolution of history as a process. He failed to engage my attention and thought as Nietzsche had. When I read Hegel’s statement “World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom – a progress whose necessity we have to investigate” (1953, p.24), I thought, Yes, very well; I will continue to investigate. I stopped reading Hegel at that point and began my investigation, continuing unto this day.
My classmates had not stumbled into the adventurous discovery of history as I had. No wonder: textbooks and teachers constituted their exposure to it. I was on the path of intellectual exploration, a never-ending quest. In existential terms, I understood history (universal) as our nature, a nature far more mysterious than could be grasped but the only study worth a lifetime of effort (learning as our profession), always unfolding, always new, refreshed.
Many years later, after I had quit employment, a new Commissioner came to head the Minnesota Department of Education in a Republican administration. She professed a love of history and brought her old history books along with her into office. At that time, history was one of the state curriculum standards under development. As the controversies of what was valid played out in the standards revision, the Commissioner railed against revisionism in history. For her, history was fixed, unarguable and official. Too much Hegel, I thought; not enough Nietzsche. Obviously, she never read Schnackenberg.
____
For more context on my formative reading experiences, click for the post Acquisitions.
For retrieval of my posts with greater relevance, logic and precision than Google has yet to provide, see CeptsFormIndex for those index links.
I welcome all comments to blog articles. For personal comments to me, send to rogdesk@charter.net.
© Copyright 2009 by Roger Sween.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Yargy
A Humorous Look at Etymology
Yargy, the adjectival of the exclamation “yarg,!” itself a variant of “arg,” “argh,” “aarg,” or “aargh” is an archaism of polyglot origins. Rarely used since the Websterian lexicographic and orthographic reforms of the early 19th century in its American English survivals, its extinction in the rest of the world is sadly remarkable. Regarded by linguistic purists as slang of the lowest socio-economic orders, yargy has an honored and expressive past among the literate and sophisticate of all classes.
Denotatively, yargy refers to a task or event that is tedious, unpleasant or otherwise revolting; i.e., nauseating. Such references are clear in the Middle English gargy from the Norman French gargou, via the Old French gargouille, namely the throat. See gargle, gargyole.[i ] Yargy is readily found in several medieval pieces, particularly in the anonymous Kent and Sussex poets [ii] and in one unpublished fragment of Lady Katharine Swynford:
Ruls in our reye
And roted in the stree,
For wickede wederes
And yargy brokes and brynke... [iii]
That these uses continued down the centuries can be seen in subsequent references in such variant forms as:
At ten o’cock at night the whole cargo of the chamber utensils is flung out of a back window that looks unto the street or lane, and the maid calls “Gardy loo” to the passengers.—Smollett, Humphrey Clinker (1771)[iv]
Yargy, though of diminshed use generally, enjoys a plentitude of currency among Midwestern descendants of mid-nineteenth century Norwegian immigrants, especially from Valdres and Balestrand areas. The continued use of yarg! and its inflections has been found due to the cognate use in Old Norse of yo argene, the berserker battle cry of the Viking raiders, clearing their throats, expectorating or (says Henrik Lunde Larsson) vomiting on their victims.[v]
In a seminal work, Raji Pouri Bannashari has traced yarg to the proto-Indo European “ghargh,” a hacking cough. His efforts to further link the word to Cro-Magnon speech would have been a linguistic breakthrough, which unfortunately, he did not live to achieve.[vi]
i Cf the monograph of professor Hector de Sainte Genevieve, La Grande Gargouille et Ses Associations dans les Langages Europeens, Paris, 1865.
ii See the fine collection of Sir Reginald Rexroth-Jones, Expletive and Invective References in the Doggerel of the Sudbury Poet and His Circle, 1312-1343, Canterbury, 1912.
iii Ms. D777S77 in the private collection of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Efforts of Dame Angela Potter-Lamely to attribute these lines to Chaucer have not been accepted by other scholars of the Chaucerian canon. See her "Rules in our reye," Drawn & Quarterly, XCVI (October 1948) 312-337.
iv As quoted in The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, based on the original book of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, revised by Bergen Evans, Ware, Hertfordshire, 1994 reprint of 1970 edition, page 449.
v See "Yarg og Oofta," Papers before the International Conference on Going Berserk, Nordic Council, 1955, 177-212 [Norwegian with English summary].
vi See his Glottal and Epiglottal Interjections among Gothic and Sanskrit Cognates and their Pre-Literate Origins, New Delhi, 1989.
_____
I wrote this spoof in the latter 1980s when our son, Kristofer Sween, asked me if I could find the origin of "yargy." Finding any origin impossible, I made up a “likely” explanation and sent the report to him. Kristofer turned around and shared it at a gathering of his friends who remarked on my information. When I found they had taken it seriously, I afterwards made sure to call it humor.
For retrieval of my posts with greater relevance, logic and precision than Google has yet to provide, see CeptsFormIndex for those index links.
I welcome all comments to blog articles. For personal comments to me, send to rogdesk@charter.net.
© Copyright 2009 by Roger Sween.
Yargy, the adjectival of the exclamation “yarg,!” itself a variant of “arg,” “argh,” “aarg,” or “aargh” is an archaism of polyglot origins. Rarely used since the Websterian lexicographic and orthographic reforms of the early 19th century in its American English survivals, its extinction in the rest of the world is sadly remarkable. Regarded by linguistic purists as slang of the lowest socio-economic orders, yargy has an honored and expressive past among the literate and sophisticate of all classes.
Denotatively, yargy refers to a task or event that is tedious, unpleasant or otherwise revolting; i.e., nauseating. Such references are clear in the Middle English gargy from the Norman French gargou, via the Old French gargouille, namely the throat. See gargle, gargyole.[i ] Yargy is readily found in several medieval pieces, particularly in the anonymous Kent and Sussex poets [ii] and in one unpublished fragment of Lady Katharine Swynford:
Ruls in our reye
And roted in the stree,
For wickede wederes
And yargy brokes and brynke... [iii]
That these uses continued down the centuries can be seen in subsequent references in such variant forms as:
At ten o’cock at night the whole cargo of the chamber utensils is flung out of a back window that looks unto the street or lane, and the maid calls “Gardy loo” to the passengers.—Smollett, Humphrey Clinker (1771)[iv]
Yargy, though of diminshed use generally, enjoys a plentitude of currency among Midwestern descendants of mid-nineteenth century Norwegian immigrants, especially from Valdres and Balestrand areas. The continued use of yarg! and its inflections has been found due to the cognate use in Old Norse of yo argene, the berserker battle cry of the Viking raiders, clearing their throats, expectorating or (says Henrik Lunde Larsson) vomiting on their victims.[v]
In a seminal work, Raji Pouri Bannashari has traced yarg to the proto-Indo European “ghargh,” a hacking cough. His efforts to further link the word to Cro-Magnon speech would have been a linguistic breakthrough, which unfortunately, he did not live to achieve.[vi]
i Cf the monograph of professor Hector de Sainte Genevieve, La Grande Gargouille et Ses Associations dans les Langages Europeens, Paris, 1865.
ii See the fine collection of Sir Reginald Rexroth-Jones, Expletive and Invective References in the Doggerel of the Sudbury Poet and His Circle, 1312-1343, Canterbury, 1912.
iii Ms. D777S77 in the private collection of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Efforts of Dame Angela Potter-Lamely to attribute these lines to Chaucer have not been accepted by other scholars of the Chaucerian canon. See her "Rules in our reye," Drawn & Quarterly, XCVI (October 1948) 312-337.
iv As quoted in The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, based on the original book of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, revised by Bergen Evans, Ware, Hertfordshire, 1994 reprint of 1970 edition, page 449.
v See "Yarg og Oofta," Papers before the International Conference on Going Berserk, Nordic Council, 1955, 177-212 [Norwegian with English summary].
vi See his Glottal and Epiglottal Interjections among Gothic and Sanskrit Cognates and their Pre-Literate Origins, New Delhi, 1989.
_____
I wrote this spoof in the latter 1980s when our son, Kristofer Sween, asked me if I could find the origin of "yargy." Finding any origin impossible, I made up a “likely” explanation and sent the report to him. Kristofer turned around and shared it at a gathering of his friends who remarked on my information. When I found they had taken it seriously, I afterwards made sure to call it humor.
For retrieval of my posts with greater relevance, logic and precision than Google has yet to provide, see CeptsFormIndex for those index links.
I welcome all comments to blog articles. For personal comments to me, send to rogdesk@charter.net.
© Copyright 2009 by Roger Sween.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Presidents, Politics, Education
Commentary by Roger Sween (c) Copyright 2009.
Today a view prevails that education is too important to leave to educators. Today, partisanship runs roughshod over most issues so that taking a civil approach to our challenges is a challenge itself. Recently, President Obama’s efforts to address schools collided with partisanship even before the public knew what he would say.
Education is the process by which we learn to learn and thereby make informed choices. Politics is the process by which we make choices in our association with one another. Therefore, education and politics have their foundational link.
At our national birth, the Continental Congress provided for the addition of new states from public lands, and dedicated the 16th section in each township for the support of schools. Subsequent federal interest towards education grew slowly as it did in other social areas.
Our federal government presently has responsibility to ensure equal educational opportunity for all and to improve the quality of that education through support, research and information. Presidents since Eisenhower have kept close to education and our public schools. Presidents have often gone into schools to speak to students. Our 40th and 41st presidents were the first to use television broadcasts beamed directly to schools across the country; their remarks distinctly differ. Transcripts appear in Internet copies.
Ronald Reagan talked before a junior high school audience, gathered in the State Dining Room, November 14, 1988, shortly before leaving office. He talked about the peaceful transfer of power in the recent presidential election, the U.S. as the world’s oldest self-governing democracy, our leadership in the world, and the onset of technological change. He urged students “that the most important thing you can do is to ground yourself in the ideas and values of the American Revolution.” He invoked God as the helper in our foundation, described the Founders as the descendants of the Pilgrims, and extolled the values of faith and family.
Except to refer to American Education Week, the words education and learning do not appear in Reagan’s remarks. He took ten questions on such topics as the war on drugs, his accomplishments, the federal deficit and taxes, minority educational opportunities, and gun control. These exchanges took twice as long as his remarks. Judge for yourself whether his answers are partisan.
George Herbert Walker Bush talked from a junior high school classroom in DC, October 10, 1991, near the end of his third year in office. He refers to the simultaneous release of the National Goals Report, a report card on current levels of student achievement. He challenged, “Education matters, and what you do today, and what you don’t do can change your future. ... Work harder, learn more, revolutionize American education. ... No excuses.” He referred to their teacher as an exemplar of study and success and pointed out successful students in their school.
In these prior occurrences, administrators and teachers likely made choices whether to invite the presidents into their schools. Such is the nature of educational decisions. We do not know whether non-educational influences affected those decisions. In the present case, we do know. Today as compared to eighteen years ago, it is easy via the Internet to whip up opposition when some partisan does not want someone else heard.
Unfortunately, some school administrators now play it safe, trying to avoid a “political football.” What have they to fear but being hassled? Do they not realize that the First Amendment is on their side? Do they not understand the Constitutional guarantees whereby students have access to free speech. Instead, they cautiously screen whether the potentially offending speech needs to be accepted, redacted, or ignored. Hooray for those who seize the teachable moment and stand behind it!
What do students learn about this approach to information? We must fear information, especially when disagreeable. We are not to make up our own minds based upon criteria that tests information. Authority is a better route to knowledge than thinking and learning for oneself after hearing, reflecting, discussing and deciding.
Let us be glad when parents are so concerned about what their children might receive outside the home that they want to know what that message is. Here is a vast improvement over parents who surrender their children to television or some other techno distraction. Certainly, parents have this right to have their concerns met. Minnesota Statutes protect the right by specifically allowing parents to opt their children out of curriculum components for some other agreeable substitute.
More commendable are those parents who realize that at some nearby point their children go into the world of give and take. Such parents have led their children in self-reliant thinking, the desire to know, and the ability to stand up for their ideas and beliefs.
By this means, the public enjoyment of freedom of speech does not dwindle before the wishes of some who are bothered by the same opportunity and need to deny it to others.
This commentary, slightly revised from the original, first appeared in the Red Wing Republican Eagle, 10 September 2009, page 4.
Roger Sween is a past president of the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education and of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom. He writes about ideas on CeptsForm and other companion blogs.
Today a view prevails that education is too important to leave to educators. Today, partisanship runs roughshod over most issues so that taking a civil approach to our challenges is a challenge itself. Recently, President Obama’s efforts to address schools collided with partisanship even before the public knew what he would say.
Education is the process by which we learn to learn and thereby make informed choices. Politics is the process by which we make choices in our association with one another. Therefore, education and politics have their foundational link.
At our national birth, the Continental Congress provided for the addition of new states from public lands, and dedicated the 16th section in each township for the support of schools. Subsequent federal interest towards education grew slowly as it did in other social areas.
Our federal government presently has responsibility to ensure equal educational opportunity for all and to improve the quality of that education through support, research and information. Presidents since Eisenhower have kept close to education and our public schools. Presidents have often gone into schools to speak to students. Our 40th and 41st presidents were the first to use television broadcasts beamed directly to schools across the country; their remarks distinctly differ. Transcripts appear in Internet copies.
Ronald Reagan talked before a junior high school audience, gathered in the State Dining Room, November 14, 1988, shortly before leaving office. He talked about the peaceful transfer of power in the recent presidential election, the U.S. as the world’s oldest self-governing democracy, our leadership in the world, and the onset of technological change. He urged students “that the most important thing you can do is to ground yourself in the ideas and values of the American Revolution.” He invoked God as the helper in our foundation, described the Founders as the descendants of the Pilgrims, and extolled the values of faith and family.
Except to refer to American Education Week, the words education and learning do not appear in Reagan’s remarks. He took ten questions on such topics as the war on drugs, his accomplishments, the federal deficit and taxes, minority educational opportunities, and gun control. These exchanges took twice as long as his remarks. Judge for yourself whether his answers are partisan.
George Herbert Walker Bush talked from a junior high school classroom in DC, October 10, 1991, near the end of his third year in office. He refers to the simultaneous release of the National Goals Report, a report card on current levels of student achievement. He challenged, “Education matters, and what you do today, and what you don’t do can change your future. ... Work harder, learn more, revolutionize American education. ... No excuses.” He referred to their teacher as an exemplar of study and success and pointed out successful students in their school.
In these prior occurrences, administrators and teachers likely made choices whether to invite the presidents into their schools. Such is the nature of educational decisions. We do not know whether non-educational influences affected those decisions. In the present case, we do know. Today as compared to eighteen years ago, it is easy via the Internet to whip up opposition when some partisan does not want someone else heard.
Unfortunately, some school administrators now play it safe, trying to avoid a “political football.” What have they to fear but being hassled? Do they not realize that the First Amendment is on their side? Do they not understand the Constitutional guarantees whereby students have access to free speech. Instead, they cautiously screen whether the potentially offending speech needs to be accepted, redacted, or ignored. Hooray for those who seize the teachable moment and stand behind it!
What do students learn about this approach to information? We must fear information, especially when disagreeable. We are not to make up our own minds based upon criteria that tests information. Authority is a better route to knowledge than thinking and learning for oneself after hearing, reflecting, discussing and deciding.
Let us be glad when parents are so concerned about what their children might receive outside the home that they want to know what that message is. Here is a vast improvement over parents who surrender their children to television or some other techno distraction. Certainly, parents have this right to have their concerns met. Minnesota Statutes protect the right by specifically allowing parents to opt their children out of curriculum components for some other agreeable substitute.
More commendable are those parents who realize that at some nearby point their children go into the world of give and take. Such parents have led their children in self-reliant thinking, the desire to know, and the ability to stand up for their ideas and beliefs.
By this means, the public enjoyment of freedom of speech does not dwindle before the wishes of some who are bothered by the same opportunity and need to deny it to others.
This commentary, slightly revised from the original, first appeared in the Red Wing Republican Eagle, 10 September 2009, page 4.
Roger Sween is a past president of the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education and of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom. He writes about ideas on CeptsForm and other companion blogs.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Equity Issue
The Equity Issue & AAUW's Membership
I am a member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), an organization that prides itself on learning, the study of issues, and civil discussion. Membership is currently putting these values to the test as it prepares to engage at its national convention in a full scale revision of its operating bylaws. Bylaws revision has come to us after the previous convention in 2007 voted overwhelmingly to restructure the organization and charge the Bylaws Committee to develop bylaws to carry out such restructuring.
After more than a year of work, publication of the bylaws and supporting material has opened considerable explanation, discussion and controversy. At the start, members have differed chiefly over a change in membership eligibility. What follows is one example of this interchange.
On April 27, 2009, Nancy Shoemaker of North Carolina informed me that she had seen an opposition piece dealing with the membership question on the blog Herban Sprawl. I decided to look at it and then to write a response. That piece follows.
What AAUW Is About
Thanks so much for raising these questions. I am grateful for every avenue to discuss them.
I am one of the people who joined AAUW out of attention to its aims, not because of any need to recognize my academic achievements. That was 20 years ago when AAUW changed membership eligibility to admit men. Since then, I have steeped myself in AAUW. I became the first male president of an AAUW branch and held other branch offices. I attended every state convention since 1989, including this last weekend. I served on state committees and under two state presidents as administrative assistant, a job broader than it sounds.
Consequently, I also became involved at the national level, attending association conventions from Providence (2003) onwards. I happen to be from a branch and state that for several years has worked for a more inclusive membership. In fact, our branch generated the bylaws amendment, further supported by AAUW Minnesota, to extend membership to those who have an associate or equivalent degree and AAUW passed in 2005.
I am now serving my fourth and final year on the AAUW Bylaws Committee, the group that revised the currently proposed bylaws for our restructured organization. We did as charged by the delegates at the 2007 convention to prepare bylaws for the restructured organization beginning July 2009. Many areas required action, but membership issues that have been under discussion for several years, attract the most controversy.
We are making changes for our organization in the 21st century. Other national organizations are doing the same. As the Bylaws Committee researched restructuring, we found lots of eagerness for information about positive changes, but few actual changes being made at the time except at the directorial level. The results of extensive member input in AAUW’s strategic planning process showed demand for a changed organization that will be leaner, efficient, and flexible, and up-to-date.
You are right that membership eligibility is an idea. I disagree that it is a bad idea, and I am not sure that the discussion of it is raging. Rage is a passionate, violent or insane anger, hardly a term that goes along with discussion. My experience or observation is that the discussion has become emotional because change is an emotional experience. Arguments pro the change and pro not making the change come from our understanding and our perspective. As we discuss, our shared aim is to widen our perspective and deepen our understanding so that we see the issue on mutual terms.
Membership eligibility is an integral part of who we are as an association. We come together in any association – family, church, a democracy, or whatever – for mutual benefit and benefit beyond our group. It is never exclusively about a person individually but about our togetherness. For AAUW and its bylaws, the membership question, as with all the rest of the bylaws proposals, stems from how we see our see our mission and the possible ways to achieve it. That mission, restated in our bylaws as purpose, is “AAUW advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.” In short, as we say, “Equity is still an issue.”
AAUW began in 1881 with a few college graduate women as a means to get together, support one another, and do things. Soon the newly organized group was doing projects that affected the provision of equal educational opportunity, raising funds, doing research, and granting money. They recruited new members, but at first only those members who graduated from colleges and universities that met AAUW’s criteria for provision of educational opportunities equal to men. In that specific regard, AAUW has long ago achieved one of its original aims. All of the activities begun by our association have evolved and expanded over the years.
Membership eligibility is one of our comprehensive bylaws changes, proposed chiefly to bring our membership in line with our mission. If our mission is equity, then our membership ought to be all those who support equity. Will this radically change membership? Not likely, but it could. Here are some reasons:
1. Who do we want to associate with? We want to associate with anyone who wants to work for equity for women and girls and in the manner we have traditionally done and by the activities on which we focus: advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research.
2. What kind of person is it that would join such an organization? Our associational mission is likely more demanding and long-range than many organizations. Potential members are those who know and understand the values of equity, that is equality of opportunity and equality in treatment regardless of gender, and thereby accept what it takes to achieve the aim. They will commit because they understand. Such people are educated, formally or informally, to be learners and thereby can grasp what the organization is about. Learners know their own limits and the necessity to gain new knowledge and understanding for the challenges ahead.
3. How do such people come to AAUW? We invite them, encourage them, recruit them. We explain our mission. Often we recruit those we know best, those of our own circles. When we meet new people, we may be hesitant or embarrassed to ask about their degree status, and so we never get to the invitation stage. Eligibility based on mission removes that hurdle we have placed on ourselves. We will free ourselves to invite people when we have conversational clues about their interests, understandings, and willingness, not their degrees. Since a third of US adult women have degrees – about 60 million of them – our chances of gaining more degreed women is quite good.
4. What will membership based on mission do for us? As an organization we will live its mission and gain a new recognition. We champion equity and we regard others as deserving of equitable treatment regardless of their status. Others will see us as appreciative of every member for their contributions whatever they may be. We will have greater opportunity to work with those who share our aims, close at hand, rather than out there waiting to get it. Others will see us as extending the value of joining in the company of those who are breaking the barriers to social and economic equity for girls, women and their families.
Yes, AAUW is about education, as is our tradition. But education is understood in the bylaws, not as a pathway to membership, but a pathway to equity. We educate ourselves, we work for the education of others. If a degree was the only equivalence of education and having a degree brought all by itself both equity and a 60 million member AAUW organization, then we would be talking about another matter. Unfortunately, the degree by itself does not perform in so automatic a fashion. More is needed and working towards mission becomes the means to fulfill that need.
The Herban Sprawl Reply [herbansprawl@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 3:43 PM
To: rogdesk@charter.net
Subject: Re: Herban Sprawl comment
Roger,
I have a policy that I do not edit comments, except for spelling and grammar. Yours is good, but it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. If you can send me a comment that is a pithy 50 words or less, I'm happy to post it. I'm not soliciting long explanations. This is not an AAUW site. This is a woman's blog that is quite personal, highly opinionated and, from time to time, somewhat serious. If you can live with an abbreviated comment, then please do that for me.
If you doubt that this is a raging discussion, then you aren't listening. There are women in some states who will not renew their memberships if this change goes through. For myself, I think the
equity thing has gotten to be more important than the original intent of an organization for college-educated women to come together for mutual intellectual benefit and sociability. That's the reason I joined. That men are allowed to join doesn't bother me, but it wouldn't have been a priority for me had I been a member when that was decided.
Anyway, please feel free to resubmit something more appropriate as a brief comment.
The Herban Sprawler
Reflection and Response
Clearly I had held the wrong assumption. It seemed to me that when someone publicly raised a question that is a subject of controversy, they would want information on the topic. I troubled myself that I could legitimately condense what I had already said in a summary fashion into only fifty words. I therefore backed out as politely as I could.
From: Roger Sween [rogdesk@charter.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:47 AM
To: 'herbansprawl@yahoo.com'
Subject: RE: Herban Sprawl comment
Now that I have read the front end of your blog, I see that I missed completely the warning on size.
Sorry, but I assumed after reading the one portion that you were inviting discussion which to me means fullness.
Thank you for the invitation to reply with 50 words. I have mulled this for a day and come to the conclusion that my best approach is to treat the “Membership Issue” on my own blog where I can handle the complexity and length and keep it up to date.
My best to your endeavors.
--Roger
I am a member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), an organization that prides itself on learning, the study of issues, and civil discussion. Membership is currently putting these values to the test as it prepares to engage at its national convention in a full scale revision of its operating bylaws. Bylaws revision has come to us after the previous convention in 2007 voted overwhelmingly to restructure the organization and charge the Bylaws Committee to develop bylaws to carry out such restructuring.
After more than a year of work, publication of the bylaws and supporting material has opened considerable explanation, discussion and controversy. At the start, members have differed chiefly over a change in membership eligibility. What follows is one example of this interchange.
On April 27, 2009, Nancy Shoemaker of North Carolina informed me that she had seen an opposition piece dealing with the membership question on the blog Herban Sprawl. I decided to look at it and then to write a response. That piece follows.
What AAUW Is About
Thanks so much for raising these questions. I am grateful for every avenue to discuss them.
I am one of the people who joined AAUW out of attention to its aims, not because of any need to recognize my academic achievements. That was 20 years ago when AAUW changed membership eligibility to admit men. Since then, I have steeped myself in AAUW. I became the first male president of an AAUW branch and held other branch offices. I attended every state convention since 1989, including this last weekend. I served on state committees and under two state presidents as administrative assistant, a job broader than it sounds.
Consequently, I also became involved at the national level, attending association conventions from Providence (2003) onwards. I happen to be from a branch and state that for several years has worked for a more inclusive membership. In fact, our branch generated the bylaws amendment, further supported by AAUW Minnesota, to extend membership to those who have an associate or equivalent degree and AAUW passed in 2005.
I am now serving my fourth and final year on the AAUW Bylaws Committee, the group that revised the currently proposed bylaws for our restructured organization. We did as charged by the delegates at the 2007 convention to prepare bylaws for the restructured organization beginning July 2009. Many areas required action, but membership issues that have been under discussion for several years, attract the most controversy.
We are making changes for our organization in the 21st century. Other national organizations are doing the same. As the Bylaws Committee researched restructuring, we found lots of eagerness for information about positive changes, but few actual changes being made at the time except at the directorial level. The results of extensive member input in AAUW’s strategic planning process showed demand for a changed organization that will be leaner, efficient, and flexible, and up-to-date.
You are right that membership eligibility is an idea. I disagree that it is a bad idea, and I am not sure that the discussion of it is raging. Rage is a passionate, violent or insane anger, hardly a term that goes along with discussion. My experience or observation is that the discussion has become emotional because change is an emotional experience. Arguments pro the change and pro not making the change come from our understanding and our perspective. As we discuss, our shared aim is to widen our perspective and deepen our understanding so that we see the issue on mutual terms.
Membership eligibility is an integral part of who we are as an association. We come together in any association – family, church, a democracy, or whatever – for mutual benefit and benefit beyond our group. It is never exclusively about a person individually but about our togetherness. For AAUW and its bylaws, the membership question, as with all the rest of the bylaws proposals, stems from how we see our see our mission and the possible ways to achieve it. That mission, restated in our bylaws as purpose, is “AAUW advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.” In short, as we say, “Equity is still an issue.”
AAUW began in 1881 with a few college graduate women as a means to get together, support one another, and do things. Soon the newly organized group was doing projects that affected the provision of equal educational opportunity, raising funds, doing research, and granting money. They recruited new members, but at first only those members who graduated from colleges and universities that met AAUW’s criteria for provision of educational opportunities equal to men. In that specific regard, AAUW has long ago achieved one of its original aims. All of the activities begun by our association have evolved and expanded over the years.
Membership eligibility is one of our comprehensive bylaws changes, proposed chiefly to bring our membership in line with our mission. If our mission is equity, then our membership ought to be all those who support equity. Will this radically change membership? Not likely, but it could. Here are some reasons:
1. Who do we want to associate with? We want to associate with anyone who wants to work for equity for women and girls and in the manner we have traditionally done and by the activities on which we focus: advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research.
2. What kind of person is it that would join such an organization? Our associational mission is likely more demanding and long-range than many organizations. Potential members are those who know and understand the values of equity, that is equality of opportunity and equality in treatment regardless of gender, and thereby accept what it takes to achieve the aim. They will commit because they understand. Such people are educated, formally or informally, to be learners and thereby can grasp what the organization is about. Learners know their own limits and the necessity to gain new knowledge and understanding for the challenges ahead.
3. How do such people come to AAUW? We invite them, encourage them, recruit them. We explain our mission. Often we recruit those we know best, those of our own circles. When we meet new people, we may be hesitant or embarrassed to ask about their degree status, and so we never get to the invitation stage. Eligibility based on mission removes that hurdle we have placed on ourselves. We will free ourselves to invite people when we have conversational clues about their interests, understandings, and willingness, not their degrees. Since a third of US adult women have degrees – about 60 million of them – our chances of gaining more degreed women is quite good.
4. What will membership based on mission do for us? As an organization we will live its mission and gain a new recognition. We champion equity and we regard others as deserving of equitable treatment regardless of their status. Others will see us as appreciative of every member for their contributions whatever they may be. We will have greater opportunity to work with those who share our aims, close at hand, rather than out there waiting to get it. Others will see us as extending the value of joining in the company of those who are breaking the barriers to social and economic equity for girls, women and their families.
Yes, AAUW is about education, as is our tradition. But education is understood in the bylaws, not as a pathway to membership, but a pathway to equity. We educate ourselves, we work for the education of others. If a degree was the only equivalence of education and having a degree brought all by itself both equity and a 60 million member AAUW organization, then we would be talking about another matter. Unfortunately, the degree by itself does not perform in so automatic a fashion. More is needed and working towards mission becomes the means to fulfill that need.
The Herban Sprawl Reply [herbansprawl@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 3:43 PM
To: rogdesk@charter.net
Subject: Re: Herban Sprawl comment
Roger,
I have a policy that I do not edit comments, except for spelling and grammar. Yours is good, but it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. If you can send me a comment that is a pithy 50 words or less, I'm happy to post it. I'm not soliciting long explanations. This is not an AAUW site. This is a woman's blog that is quite personal, highly opinionated and, from time to time, somewhat serious. If you can live with an abbreviated comment, then please do that for me.
If you doubt that this is a raging discussion, then you aren't listening. There are women in some states who will not renew their memberships if this change goes through. For myself, I think the
equity thing has gotten to be more important than the original intent of an organization for college-educated women to come together for mutual intellectual benefit and sociability. That's the reason I joined. That men are allowed to join doesn't bother me, but it wouldn't have been a priority for me had I been a member when that was decided.
Anyway, please feel free to resubmit something more appropriate as a brief comment.
The Herban Sprawler
Reflection and Response
Clearly I had held the wrong assumption. It seemed to me that when someone publicly raised a question that is a subject of controversy, they would want information on the topic. I troubled myself that I could legitimately condense what I had already said in a summary fashion into only fifty words. I therefore backed out as politely as I could.
From: Roger Sween [rogdesk@charter.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:47 AM
To: 'herbansprawl@yahoo.com'
Subject: RE: Herban Sprawl comment
Now that I have read the front end of your blog, I see that I missed completely the warning on size.
Sorry, but I assumed after reading the one portion that you were inviting discussion which to me means fullness.
Thank you for the invitation to reply with 50 words. I have mulled this for a day and come to the conclusion that my best approach is to treat the “Membership Issue” on my own blog where I can handle the complexity and length and keep it up to date.
My best to your endeavors.
--Roger
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Index Links
For the up-to-date index to all blog contents on CeptsForm and companion blogs - CeptsForm Library, Concept Reviews, and Loria Series - go to CeptsFormIndex.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
The Big IDea
Whose Intelligence? Whose Design?
Polls are showing large or majority preference for the teaching of creationism or its current iteration, “intelligent design,” alongside the theory of evolution. However good this proposal, problems remain. Given that the presumption on teaching intends the public schools, the first question becomes, where in the curricula?
Popular understanding sees creationism (the act of God as creator) as the explanation for the natural order. Creationism accepts that species have always existed as they are at present and that the Biblical record is inerrant and sufficient on the subject. Intelligent design offers that though it took ages to get to the present state of existence, current species are too complex to be explainable by the accidents of adaptation and natural selection. This complexity requires, therefore, the originating agency of intelligence at work in the universe. Creationists and design theorists do not necessarily agree on the issue.
Likely, the proponents of side by side teaching would like these subjects taught in science classes. To do this requires the application of scientific principles to the discussion. Science is based on theories that must explain existing observation and data and be subject to publicly verifiable tests of evidence, experiment, prediction and disconfirmation. Creationism and intelligent design cannot hold up to scientific requirements because they argue from revelatory authority and conjectural inference that do not account for all the evidence except in dismissive ways. Put the duo to the test in science classes, and they would not hold up. Do their proponents want that? Public school science classes are inappropriate venues for topics that are not scientific. Of course, we could radically alter the basis of what constitutes science.
Another possibility for teaching creationism and design theory is in some social studies or history class where students explore the function and effect of ideas in civilization. This approach is certainly preferable to science classes, because here the particular requirements of science give way to how ideas stand and have stood through time on their own. Such ideas do not have to be valid, just widely and long held. Ideas of a Creator or of a Design Agent are of long standing, and here the tests are ones of reason and the rules of logic while the evidence is the effect or consequence that such ideas have in practice. Unfortunately, since the enlightenment period, these ideas have not fared well under examination.
Bishop Butler in The Analogy of Religion (1736) casts doubt on the assumption that the God known through nature can necessarily be the same God known through revelation. David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (posthumous, 1779) questions how things in the world can be comparable to the world as a whole; logic stretches beyond its bounds when one of the things to be compared is beyond the world. Immanuel Kant found in The Critique of Pure Reason (2nd ed., 1787) that the argument cannot lead to a theologically significant conclusion about God since the attributes of God are beyond causation. These are some of the major intellectual difficulties to overcome. Do the proponents of creationism and design want to come up against such critiques where they would not always fare well? Nevertheless, this approach to the origin alternatives seems a welcome way to explore the character and roots of modernity. Of course, we could otherwise radically alter the basis of what constitutes logic and reason.
Perhaps, the best place to teach these various views is in a world religions class since creationism and design agency are basically religious ideas if not phenomenological ones. Sadly, few schools have world religion classes, but this issue might be just the motivation our educational system needs to make comparative religion more widespread. Here tests for relevancy, coherence and consistency exist, but on the surface anyone’s claim to revelatory authority is potentially as good as anyone else’s claim. Creationism and intelligent design (to the extent it is religious) would have a level playing field. Put them alongside the variants in creation mythology from all times and all places and let them rub shoulders with the creation stories in Animism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Native American beliefs, Islam and whatever others are out there. Presumably creationists and design theorists would welcome this approach since one of the talking points for alongside studies is that it is good to consider alternative ideas.
Further, this approach also encompasses the varieties of Christian doctrine and teaching. Encounter a little Martin Luther or others among the reformers and soon discover that one of their reforms was to clear away the dominance of Aristotle (Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics) and the scholastics (Peter Lombard’s Sentences) from medieval theology and get to the scriptural root of the faith. They taught that we don’t need argument to find God; rather, God finds us through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. We do not see God because we first find a creator; rather, through God’s gracious action, the divine finds us, and therefore we see God as the providential author of all things. This alternative takes the security of faith away from dependency on good argument for, instead, faith in faith alone. What a happy resolution exists amid the whole confrontation between created nature and its evolution!
Because wide availability of religion courses remains unlikely, school children and their parents can pursue the side by side examination through study and reading. Good and wide reading sets up a useful dialogue within oneself, however neglected that process may be in practice. Where Darwin is the target, how many opponents have read his books and those of his successors? How many proponents have read them?
Alas, whenever the common aim is to prove the credibility of creationism and intelligent design against either science, reasonable thought, or sound belief, these ideas will always have a tough time. What merit creationism and design theory may have, they must win in the professional areas among scientists, philosophers and theologians before they become welcome and widespread subject matter in public schools.
When ideas cannot win out in the long run, they have to be propelled by political force or unexamined indoctrination. That, too, is an option, but certainly not a happy one in a democracy where harmless actions are to be the result of self-examination, scrupulous knowledge and not wish fulfillment.
_____
Roger Sween advocates the wary examination of received ideas by rigorous exploration of our cultural heritage through continuous, self-directed learning. For twenty years he repesented the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education on the Board of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom and maintains a large library to support his research and writing, a library that ‘has something to offend everyone.’
© 2005, 2009 by Roger Sween.
First published in The Carp #11 (2005), and here slightly revised, the article was written at a time when Intelligent Design was a strong force and even the President of the United States was saying school children should be allowed to consider the merits of the idea along side biological evolution in science classes. Though the ID proponents promised not to go away when they lost a court case, mass publicity attendant on them has disintegrated. Nevertheless, the ID and similar arguments on the appearance of species will continue to face the same arguments perilous to them as outlined above.
I invite substantive comment on the contents of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Polls are showing large or majority preference for the teaching of creationism or its current iteration, “intelligent design,” alongside the theory of evolution. However good this proposal, problems remain. Given that the presumption on teaching intends the public schools, the first question becomes, where in the curricula?
Popular understanding sees creationism (the act of God as creator) as the explanation for the natural order. Creationism accepts that species have always existed as they are at present and that the Biblical record is inerrant and sufficient on the subject. Intelligent design offers that though it took ages to get to the present state of existence, current species are too complex to be explainable by the accidents of adaptation and natural selection. This complexity requires, therefore, the originating agency of intelligence at work in the universe. Creationists and design theorists do not necessarily agree on the issue.
Likely, the proponents of side by side teaching would like these subjects taught in science classes. To do this requires the application of scientific principles to the discussion. Science is based on theories that must explain existing observation and data and be subject to publicly verifiable tests of evidence, experiment, prediction and disconfirmation. Creationism and intelligent design cannot hold up to scientific requirements because they argue from revelatory authority and conjectural inference that do not account for all the evidence except in dismissive ways. Put the duo to the test in science classes, and they would not hold up. Do their proponents want that? Public school science classes are inappropriate venues for topics that are not scientific. Of course, we could radically alter the basis of what constitutes science.
Another possibility for teaching creationism and design theory is in some social studies or history class where students explore the function and effect of ideas in civilization. This approach is certainly preferable to science classes, because here the particular requirements of science give way to how ideas stand and have stood through time on their own. Such ideas do not have to be valid, just widely and long held. Ideas of a Creator or of a Design Agent are of long standing, and here the tests are ones of reason and the rules of logic while the evidence is the effect or consequence that such ideas have in practice. Unfortunately, since the enlightenment period, these ideas have not fared well under examination.
Bishop Butler in The Analogy of Religion (1736) casts doubt on the assumption that the God known through nature can necessarily be the same God known through revelation. David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (posthumous, 1779) questions how things in the world can be comparable to the world as a whole; logic stretches beyond its bounds when one of the things to be compared is beyond the world. Immanuel Kant found in The Critique of Pure Reason (2nd ed., 1787) that the argument cannot lead to a theologically significant conclusion about God since the attributes of God are beyond causation. These are some of the major intellectual difficulties to overcome. Do the proponents of creationism and design want to come up against such critiques where they would not always fare well? Nevertheless, this approach to the origin alternatives seems a welcome way to explore the character and roots of modernity. Of course, we could otherwise radically alter the basis of what constitutes logic and reason.
Perhaps, the best place to teach these various views is in a world religions class since creationism and design agency are basically religious ideas if not phenomenological ones. Sadly, few schools have world religion classes, but this issue might be just the motivation our educational system needs to make comparative religion more widespread. Here tests for relevancy, coherence and consistency exist, but on the surface anyone’s claim to revelatory authority is potentially as good as anyone else’s claim. Creationism and intelligent design (to the extent it is religious) would have a level playing field. Put them alongside the variants in creation mythology from all times and all places and let them rub shoulders with the creation stories in Animism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Native American beliefs, Islam and whatever others are out there. Presumably creationists and design theorists would welcome this approach since one of the talking points for alongside studies is that it is good to consider alternative ideas.
Further, this approach also encompasses the varieties of Christian doctrine and teaching. Encounter a little Martin Luther or others among the reformers and soon discover that one of their reforms was to clear away the dominance of Aristotle (Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics) and the scholastics (Peter Lombard’s Sentences) from medieval theology and get to the scriptural root of the faith. They taught that we don’t need argument to find God; rather, God finds us through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. We do not see God because we first find a creator; rather, through God’s gracious action, the divine finds us, and therefore we see God as the providential author of all things. This alternative takes the security of faith away from dependency on good argument for, instead, faith in faith alone. What a happy resolution exists amid the whole confrontation between created nature and its evolution!
Because wide availability of religion courses remains unlikely, school children and their parents can pursue the side by side examination through study and reading. Good and wide reading sets up a useful dialogue within oneself, however neglected that process may be in practice. Where Darwin is the target, how many opponents have read his books and those of his successors? How many proponents have read them?
Alas, whenever the common aim is to prove the credibility of creationism and intelligent design against either science, reasonable thought, or sound belief, these ideas will always have a tough time. What merit creationism and design theory may have, they must win in the professional areas among scientists, philosophers and theologians before they become welcome and widespread subject matter in public schools.
When ideas cannot win out in the long run, they have to be propelled by political force or unexamined indoctrination. That, too, is an option, but certainly not a happy one in a democracy where harmless actions are to be the result of self-examination, scrupulous knowledge and not wish fulfillment.
_____
Roger Sween advocates the wary examination of received ideas by rigorous exploration of our cultural heritage through continuous, self-directed learning. For twenty years he repesented the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education on the Board of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom and maintains a large library to support his research and writing, a library that ‘has something to offend everyone.’
© 2005, 2009 by Roger Sween.
First published in The Carp #11 (2005), and here slightly revised, the article was written at a time when Intelligent Design was a strong force and even the President of the United States was saying school children should be allowed to consider the merits of the idea along side biological evolution in science classes. Though the ID proponents promised not to go away when they lost a court case, mass publicity attendant on them has disintegrated. Nevertheless, the ID and similar arguments on the appearance of species will continue to face the same arguments perilous to them as outlined above.
I invite substantive comment on the contents of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Learn Up Close
We learn where we are.
Distance learning as an expression is a misnomer and by those words faulty in concept. Learning takes place immediate to learners, not distant from them. What the expression actually intends and ought to state instead is, learning at a distance from the originating resource.
In reality, “learning at a distance” has existed since the dawn of history when scribes first created writing and sent written knowledge down the street, over land and over sea. We can study the thinking of the pre-Socratics, dead for more than 2500 years and living then thousands of miles away. Contrary to some bit of techno-prejudice, we have not thought all these years of that study in its reach beyond time and space as “distance learning,” merely as learning.
The expression “distance learning” is one more insidiously pervasive example that the institutionalized dispenser of education whether school, teacher or other agency is superior to the individual learner without whom no learning is possible. A more exact term is distance education; that is, educational content provided to remote but connected learners by using some form of technology.
Distance education is the terminology used by such reference sources as the online EBSCO MegaFILE to article texts on the subject – 2,778 of them as of this date. The Library of Congress and all the world’s libraries that follow LC’s thesaurus of subject headings as a standard also employ distance education as the established term. You can Google “distance learning” in Wikipedia and the article you turn up is headed “distance education,” brought to you by automatic referral from the common, but flawed misnomer. For a recent update, see the text Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed., 2009).
No doubt, “distance learning” is amok in current popular and professional use. One professional organization, “if your work involves helping people learn wherever they may be,” is United States Distance Learning Association. The Center for Distance Learning, affiliated with the City Colleges of Chicago offers 90 courses in a wide range of disciplines. The Center for Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University has existed since 1991. Presumably, the term is not widely questioned and unlikely to go away very soon.
Distance education as we know it today is an outgrowth of correspondence courses, the first on record having originated in 1728 as a method of teaching short hand with delivery by mail. With new technologies, especially electronic ones – radio, television, and computers – educators have adapted each to enrolling students and classes at a distance from the teacher. Now whole schools operate online and the Minnesota State College and Universities, the state’s public higher education system outside the University of Minnesota, has announced its aim of delivering 25% of its classes by distance education.
Of course, being in a class online, however valuable, fails equivalence to being in a class face to face. Asynchronous participation replaces simultaneity: students reply to one another through postings, not interactive conversations. Though formats vary, classes brought together online require time shifting and likely a greater commitment to pay attention to all the other participants, not just those who participate in the limits of class time. As participation levels increase, in part due to individualization and the comfort of greater anonymity, students can demand in total far more effort from the teacher. These burdens lead to how courses are structured and what is required.
Students will discover what suits their lives, schedules and psyches. They ought also attend to what satisfies their need and desire to learn. The learning counts most of all, not the distance or the technological abolition of distance.
_____
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This article first appeared on the writing platform Helium.com and is here revised.
I welcome substantive comments on the content of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Distance learning as an expression is a misnomer and by those words faulty in concept. Learning takes place immediate to learners, not distant from them. What the expression actually intends and ought to state instead is, learning at a distance from the originating resource.
In reality, “learning at a distance” has existed since the dawn of history when scribes first created writing and sent written knowledge down the street, over land and over sea. We can study the thinking of the pre-Socratics, dead for more than 2500 years and living then thousands of miles away. Contrary to some bit of techno-prejudice, we have not thought all these years of that study in its reach beyond time and space as “distance learning,” merely as learning.
The expression “distance learning” is one more insidiously pervasive example that the institutionalized dispenser of education whether school, teacher or other agency is superior to the individual learner without whom no learning is possible. A more exact term is distance education; that is, educational content provided to remote but connected learners by using some form of technology.
Distance education is the terminology used by such reference sources as the online EBSCO MegaFILE to article texts on the subject – 2,778 of them as of this date. The Library of Congress and all the world’s libraries that follow LC’s thesaurus of subject headings as a standard also employ distance education as the established term. You can Google “distance learning” in Wikipedia and the article you turn up is headed “distance education,” brought to you by automatic referral from the common, but flawed misnomer. For a recent update, see the text Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed., 2009).
No doubt, “distance learning” is amok in current popular and professional use. One professional organization, “if your work involves helping people learn wherever they may be,” is United States Distance Learning Association. The Center for Distance Learning, affiliated with the City Colleges of Chicago offers 90 courses in a wide range of disciplines. The Center for Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University has existed since 1991. Presumably, the term is not widely questioned and unlikely to go away very soon.
Distance education as we know it today is an outgrowth of correspondence courses, the first on record having originated in 1728 as a method of teaching short hand with delivery by mail. With new technologies, especially electronic ones – radio, television, and computers – educators have adapted each to enrolling students and classes at a distance from the teacher. Now whole schools operate online and the Minnesota State College and Universities, the state’s public higher education system outside the University of Minnesota, has announced its aim of delivering 25% of its classes by distance education.
Of course, being in a class online, however valuable, fails equivalence to being in a class face to face. Asynchronous participation replaces simultaneity: students reply to one another through postings, not interactive conversations. Though formats vary, classes brought together online require time shifting and likely a greater commitment to pay attention to all the other participants, not just those who participate in the limits of class time. As participation levels increase, in part due to individualization and the comfort of greater anonymity, students can demand in total far more effort from the teacher. These burdens lead to how courses are structured and what is required.
Students will discover what suits their lives, schedules and psyches. They ought also attend to what satisfies their need and desire to learn. The learning counts most of all, not the distance or the technological abolition of distance.
_____
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This article first appeared on the writing platform Helium.com and is here revised.
I welcome substantive comments on the content of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
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