Subject: Re: micro-rant  [Was: job opportunity ]



>Whoever came up with the idea that subject-based learning in discrete
>categories was best needs to be kicked in the butt.  Schools aren't
>assembly lines.


anyone else read Toynbee?   historiologist.. {one who studies the
history of {the study of history}}.   apologies for the wierd look of
the braces, but they tend to eliminate semantic oscillations.

Toynbee's conclusions get a bit far out.. there's a definite spritual
bent to his work.. but his questions are very good ones.   one of his
biggest objections to the institution of history in the early 20th
century was that it had become industrialized.   scholars were treating
primary evidence as raw material to be processed, and going wherever the
pickings were thickest.   

one case in point dealt with two pre-roman civilizations in the
Mediterranean region.   one was the Etruscans, and i don't recall the
other.   the Etruscans had a huge shaping influence on Rome, and thus on
the development of western culture, and the other group was more or less
a blip on the radar.   the problem is that the Etruscans wrote
everything on clay tablets, and lived in a swamp.   the other group had
plenty of durable artifacts and lived in a more archaeologist-friendly
environment.   Etruscan writings are very rare, but there are entire
warehouses full of writings from this other culture, covering every
aspect of daily life in a culture which didn't influence anyone.

Toynbee was dismayed that the number of scholars researching, and
students choosing to study, each culture was proportional to the
availability of written artifacts.   the Etruscans were enormously more
important in the overall historical scope, but only a fraction of the
historical community devoted any atttention to them.   a vast number of
experts had devoted their careers, on the other hand, to translating and
indexing a couple centuries worth of daily shopping lists.


Marx had similar things to say about the dangers of bringing industrial
processes into education.   if schools are run as assembly lines,
students become commodity goods.   the 'best' students will be defined
as those most tractable to the industrial process with lowest cost and
widest general applicability.