> > Ed Weick wrote: > > > [snip] > > Real world issues don't often come in a way that make the tools of > > economics directly applicable. Mostly they come as very difficult > > questions. > [snip] > > In all seriousness, I have always treated *philosophy* as > something I expected to be pretty directly applicable > to real world issues -- and philosophy is supposed to > be much more "abstract" and "other worldly" than > *economics*....
I have to admit that I haven't read much philosophy, so I cannot comment on how readily it might be applied to real world situations. What I was attempting to say, however, is that encountering economics in the classroom and in the textbook is very different from practicing it in a work situation. In the classroom, it is encountered in an environment protected from the noise of the real world, whereas it becomes part of that noise in a work situation. Most essentially, in the classroom one integrates it into oneself; in the workplace, one integrates it into what one is doing. > > [snip] > > So, to end this, I would suggest that we not get too hung up on the > > "nature" of something like economics as a received body of thought or > > theory. Certainly, one should not hesitate to question its premises. > > But to me the important question is whether what one learned in > > academe has helped one to think and solve problems. Even though I have > > not drawn a single indifference curve since leaving the classroom, I > > would answer this in the affirmative. > > > > Ed Weick > > You seem to have made the best of what was less than the > best, and, in the process, described what the best would be: > > The best education would not focally teach relatively > useless stuff to provide truly valuable skills as a > fringe benefit/side effect/externality/etc. > > Rather, the > best (or even just acceptable...) education would > focally teach those valuable skills, and the meta-skills > to enable the student to best further improve his or her > skills and understanding thru the student's own > ever-more-self-empowering consciously self-directing > initiative. > > "Indirection" -- teaching relatively useless > theory, etc. -- would only > be used to the extent that directly teaching > a given aspect of the genuinely valuable skills proved in practice > to fall on "ears that hear not and/or eyes that do not see", > *AND*, whenever such indirect instruction/mentoring > cannot be avoided, the teacher and learner would as quickly > as possible shift from this kind of mystifying > social praxis to *studying* the structure of such > indirect learning, to help the learner acquire > "perspective" and meta-learning prowess. > > In an age where knowledge is safely stored in > printed books, the only information a learner > should ever be required to "learn" (i.e., to > cause his or her memory to serve as an ersatz > book) is information that the learner > needs to be able to use the information in the > books -- one presumably cannot do differential > equations without actually learning some of the > contect of the books about elementary algebra > and calculus. But, surely it must depend on the objectives of the individual learner. As a child I was programmed to believe that the final objective of learning was to get a job some distance up the corporate hierarchy. I was told that, to fulfill this objective, I had to assimilate material presented to me in a number of classes and textbooks. It was not until I was well into that process that I began to realize that perhaps not everything I was being asked to assimilate was, in some broader sense, relevant or useful. Some of my professors, having lodged in academe since time imemorial and perhaps not having had much experience of the workplace themselves, had little idea that what they were teaching me had little value in terms of my objectives or anyone elses, other than their own. Their own objectives? Not necessarily to make people think, but to make people think what they thought, and keep the flame alive. What I suppose you have in education is a perpetual tension between student and mentor. As an unformed being, the student is inclined to surge out in every direction. As a formed being, the mentor's job is to keep the student confined within certain bounds. Whether those bounds bear any relationship to anything external to the dialogue is probably not the issue. Whether it is the student or the mentor that prevails probably is. > I find testing in general problematic, but > certainly "open book" tests are a step or at > least a twitch in a constructive direction.... > > Now about this: > > Learning is medieval, > Learning about learning is modern/postmodern, > and learning about learning about learning [...] > is appropriate investment of the so brief > life-time of ourselves and persons we > care about. > > Edmund Husserl saw the constructive destiny of > "the West" as the overcoming of all forms of > "life lived in finitude" and our universal > transfiguration of our life into the pursuit > of infinite tasks [presumably in the > good company of good friends, a la > Rabelais...].... Brad, I must try to read Husserl. A few years ago I tried to make myself postmodern by reading Foucault, but I'm afraid I'm still stuck somewhere in the angst of existentialism. So, there it is.... > > To ask of ourselves the question Bernard Lewis > says haunts Islam vis-a-vis us: > > Where did we go wrong? It wasn't us. It was the fact that Abraham had two sons, one rightful and one wrongful. Best regards, Ed Weick
