Cargo Cults

I have been somewhat amused in recent weeks to discover that some of my old material has been recycled with patchy amendments and other stuff tacked on. Appropriate somewhat-related ritual pronouncements are then made and the desired results fervently hoped for. It is all very much like a cargo cult.

As I've mentioned before, the three technical components of my educational delivery are notes, visuals, and activities (lectures, odd games, interactive sessions). In every case, I deliberately make them complementary; that is, the notes go with the visuals but they do not directly echo each other.

An ignorant barbarian who saw my notes and the slides that accompany them (or vice versa) would think the two were not linked. However, they are very much linked — by the living agency of the activity conducted by me. It is the live lecture or interaction that binds the two, and is not replaceable without some thought and foreknowledge of the role that the mediating intelligence must play.

This was why the cargo cults were developed: people using the paradigms of their old faiths and beliefs were trying to gain the fruits of new technology and thinking by constructing models of the more visible aspects, like wooden aircraft and wicker observation towers. A sort of intellectual voodoo, so to speak.

I laugh to myself, and continue teaching. The wealth of a student's development is not in the things — notes, slides, stuff — but in the active interaction with an intelligent facilitator and fellow-traveller.