tom abeles wrote:
>
> Michael Gurstein posted David Nobel's latest "alarum":
> >
> > DIGITAL DIPLOMA MILLS, PART II
> >
> > The Coming Battle Over Online Instruction
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
[snip]
> The Academy has lost ists hegemony for a variety of reasons, many of
> which are the results of the intellectual arrogance of the high priests.
> The Academy is changed, is changing and we can not go back to a past
> that never was in a coming future that never will be.
[snip]
I know little about the history of universities, but reading
this posting caused me to recall that the reason Sigmund Freud was
unable to realize the dream of his pre-psychoanalytic youth of
becoming a university professor (I think his field was something
like invertabrate neurology...) was that he could not *afford* to.
It seems that Freud's professors were independently wealthy men who
did not earn their living from their university positions, but rather
contributed their own money toward funding their professorial
activities.
If this is right, it presents a model of something lovely for those
who could afford it: freely selected activity pursued for its own sake
--
gentlemen scholars (and, perhaps also in some cases: gentle men
scholars?).
But, of course, it was exclusionary for those who could not afford to
underwrite themselves. I personally relish the model of the
"independent scholar", in both senses of that word:
(1) students who have the means to contract with persons
of their own choosing to learn what interests them, and,
if the teacher does not prove helpful, the learner can
leave and go elsewhere without suffering any negative
consequences for their future course in life, and
(2) sometime students now become themselves learned persons
who are free to study and teach what interests them in
the ways (at the pace, etc.) they feel fitting.
Amazon.com seems to have found a copy of
Josef Pieper "Leisure : The Basis of Culture"
for me (Isn't it fitting that this
book is currently out of print?). I'm looking forward to it
(I hope it will not prove a disappointment).
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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