Disciplinary Philosophies 102
Oh, very well. Sigh. If you're going to insist that I teach a subject called The Disciplines: Philosophies of Knowledge, then I suppose I should give it a shot. BANG! Now clean up the blood on the floor, there's a good administrator.
Really though, when I last posted on this topic, I received a lot of verbal feedback but no comments. It must really be a sticky topic, redolent of the pitcher plant and other such traps. So what I'm going to do is go back a bit to a workshop I once ran in the Second Age of Humanity, in which I forced a bunch of educators to consider the answers to some silly question involving sports apparatus and its distribution.
It turns out that people have no problems thinking about stuff that either has no particular labels automatically assigned to it, or has very specific labels automatically assigned to it. The first kind of stuff has no labels (either implicit or explicit), so people aren't forced to think too hard; the second kind has the labels already pasted on, so it's not a problem. It's like being in a supermarket. The cashier looks at your stuff. If it is supermarket stuff and it is labelled, PING, and you pay $xx.xx. If it is not supermarket stuff, then nothing happens. Simple. But if it is supermarket stuff with a faulty or damaged barcode (i.e. it is stuff with no proper label but it has a kind of label) then it takes a significantly longer time to process.
One purpose of education is to teach a person how to make her own labels so that she can process things faster. In fact, if she can ascertain the value (intrinsic value, situational value, utility value, relative value, whatever) of something, life becomes a lot easier. And another purpose of education is to teach a person to use labelling so cleverly that other people agree with her.
So when we teach a language, it is important to know a few things. Where did the language come from? What were the main uses of this language? What is the history of this language? Does it automatically put a bias on certain things? How can you use it to express yourself honestly, biasedly, and manipulatively? How can others use it? How do others use it? What is the philosophical justification for saying something is well-said, well-written, or well-balanced in that language?
These are examples of the kind of question you should ask when learning about a new discipline – in this case, the study of a specific language within the larger group of linguistic disciplines. When I began to pick up languages, I learnt them in little pieces just like everyone else. But along the way, I also picked up lots of historical, social and cultural factoids linked to these pieces. And slowly, I learnt that there were philosophical questions and elements unique to the learning of language, or more suited to that kind of endeavour.
For example, one hardly thinks of science as a vehicle for conveying and maintaining cultural identity. One might make a case for history, but not economics. But the arts – language arts, performing arts, visual arts, etc – are prime candidates for this function. Hence, the learning of such things carries a specific kind of philosophical baggage.
To conclude this short post, if I had to teach a course called The Disciplines: Philosophies of Knowledge, I would approach it along these lines. What are the questions that pertain more to one discipline than another? How do we answer them? And what are the implications of the answers we might find? For this is what such a course has to be about.
Really though, when I last posted on this topic, I received a lot of verbal feedback but no comments. It must really be a sticky topic, redolent of the pitcher plant and other such traps. So what I'm going to do is go back a bit to a workshop I once ran in the Second Age of Humanity, in which I forced a bunch of educators to consider the answers to some silly question involving sports apparatus and its distribution.
It turns out that people have no problems thinking about stuff that either has no particular labels automatically assigned to it, or has very specific labels automatically assigned to it. The first kind of stuff has no labels (either implicit or explicit), so people aren't forced to think too hard; the second kind has the labels already pasted on, so it's not a problem. It's like being in a supermarket. The cashier looks at your stuff. If it is supermarket stuff and it is labelled, PING, and you pay $xx.xx. If it is not supermarket stuff, then nothing happens. Simple. But if it is supermarket stuff with a faulty or damaged barcode (i.e. it is stuff with no proper label but it has a kind of label) then it takes a significantly longer time to process.
One purpose of education is to teach a person how to make her own labels so that she can process things faster. In fact, if she can ascertain the value (intrinsic value, situational value, utility value, relative value, whatever) of something, life becomes a lot easier. And another purpose of education is to teach a person to use labelling so cleverly that other people agree with her.
So when we teach a language, it is important to know a few things. Where did the language come from? What were the main uses of this language? What is the history of this language? Does it automatically put a bias on certain things? How can you use it to express yourself honestly, biasedly, and manipulatively? How can others use it? How do others use it? What is the philosophical justification for saying something is well-said, well-written, or well-balanced in that language?
These are examples of the kind of question you should ask when learning about a new discipline – in this case, the study of a specific language within the larger group of linguistic disciplines. When I began to pick up languages, I learnt them in little pieces just like everyone else. But along the way, I also picked up lots of historical, social and cultural factoids linked to these pieces. And slowly, I learnt that there were philosophical questions and elements unique to the learning of language, or more suited to that kind of endeavour.
For example, one hardly thinks of science as a vehicle for conveying and maintaining cultural identity. One might make a case for history, but not economics. But the arts – language arts, performing arts, visual arts, etc – are prime candidates for this function. Hence, the learning of such things carries a specific kind of philosophical baggage.
To conclude this short post, if I had to teach a course called The Disciplines: Philosophies of Knowledge, I would approach it along these lines. What are the questions that pertain more to one discipline than another? How do we answer them? And what are the implications of the answers we might find? For this is what such a course has to be about.
Labels: Curriculum Development, Education, Knowledge
etched with acid at 5:27:00 pm
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