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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (36894)	5/6/1999 10:31:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Just a thought: In terms of general knowledge, each generation seems to be testing lower than those that preceded it. (Although IQs are testing higher; go figure.) That's probably an unavoidable progression. "General knowledge" increases exponentially, but our memory capacities don't. Kids today have so much more history to study, so many more English "classics" to read, that they can only fit in about half of what you and I absorbed as "general knowledge" when we were in school. Heck, when I was in school there were no home computers, Microsoft and Apple didn't exist--now general knowledge has to encompass the whole electronic revolution. I didn't have to learn anything about the Vietnam war in school, nothing about space travel (except early Heinlein and Browne and HG Wells), there were only a few countries in Africa and they didn't much matter, China was ignored, nobody even knew DNA existed, we didn't have to spend time on sex education, Aids, VD, how to date without committing date rape or harrassment, etc., etc. In order for kids today to master today's "general knowledge" they can only cover about half of what I learned in school. So I complain that my kids aren't learning as much as I did. Actually, they're probably learning more, but they have to learn what I learned in school PLUS stuff I've picked up during 35 years since, which they have to pack into just school. Right now, for example, my HS girls are studying physics, gram atomic weight and mass; I didn't even start physics until my junior year in college. Their 20th Century American History class is at least 50% stuff that happened since I left school. Their text gives one paragraph to the Berlin airlift (a defining event of my childhood), and when they read (as they did two days ago) Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech they wonder what all the fuss was about. In the time of DaVinci it was actually possible in one lifetime to read everything of value in philosophy, mathematics, science, history, religion, literature, politics, law, art, poetry, etc. Even Winston Churchill was able to read most of the significant works of many fields during his schooling. Today, it's hard to keep up with just one part of one field. (The half life of scientific writing used to be measured in centuries. Today, it's been said that the half life of scientific information is less than 7 years, and in some fields such as biotech it's probably closer to 7 months.) It is impossible today for there to be a true renaissance person, literate in every important field. Can't be done. A great loss. But makes it hard to blame students for not being as broadly educated as we were or our parents were.

To: E who wrote (36894)	5/6/1999 10:34:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

E. you and Christopher are BOTH right IMO. Sometimes that happens. <G> When I first found my net legs, what exhilarated me was the quantity of information/viewpoints, on almost any subject of current interest, that I could obtain instantly, simply by running a search. In pre-net days, it would have taken DAYS of research to turn up all that stuff -- and even then, the research would not have turned up EVERYTHING. For example, you still will be hard put to find any of that wacko right-wing stuff, or any really off-beat material, in a library. Yet on the net, here it is, just a click away...Like Christopher, I do a lot of swooping & sampling, and there is nothing to compare with the net in this regard. (Caveat: I did say "subjects of current interest". You can forget history, for example, or anything else that is older than the net itself.) At the same time, your picture of the solitary identity-seeker, hunched over his monitor, is both compelling and accurate. It is true that there have always been fringe groups, which have always published & circulated their "literature". But their offerings were not always that easily available, and they in turn were not in a position to market their wares to the wider public. What we have here is, in fact, a huge supermarket of ideas, or pseudo-ideas. E-commerce with a vengeance. That is qualititatively different. Joan