It seems like there is no longer any respect for what I would call general knowledge anymore. Certainly no one memorizes anything - that's what mobiles and Google are for - but really, there are a few things that we ought to know at all times. Scholars used to be responsible for many, many languages: Greek, Latin, French, German and English, to name a few. Nowadays, of course, no Asian language would be a poor move, either, since that part of the world is the strongest.
When I taught summer school, I was appalled to learn that none of my students knew the following dates: Caesar's invasion of Gaul, Constantine's embrace of Christianity, the fall of Rome, the Norman invasion, the signing of the Magna Carta, COLUMBUS'S landing in the Americas, Napoleon's defeat, the Civil War, and World Wars one and two. I mean, for Christ's sake, people. They, of course, aren't scholars. But they are people who have conversations, and these dates serve as benchmarks when navigating history. If you wish to know something about a Roman, it would be beneficial to know whether he lived under the Kings, the Republic, the Empire, or after the fall, all of which can be revealed to you immediately with the knowledge of his lifetime. If we take someone like Boethius, who lived c. 480-525, we understand immediately that his life must have been fraught with uncertainty, because the Visigoths razed Rome when he was only a teenager. We should all have this sort of ammunition, carried around with us at all times.
A professor I respect, almost above all others, told me about a time she tried to teach her freshmen students about mythology. They all replied, 'We did this in High School', but failed to answer even the simplest of questions: who was Persephone? who was Zeus? who were Thor and Odin? what are the Halls of Dys, and what have they to do with Demeter? We seem to study only to forget. How many of us learned those pesky verb endings for French or Spanish immediately before a quiz, and now we can't remember whether present tense of a first person -ir verb is -is or issis?
Some information is practically made for reference and not memorisation: does the Miller's Tale directly follow the Knight's Tale, or is the Franklin's Tale between them? I would not expect any non-English major to know this (nor would I expect to be held responsible for the shape of pi-bonds in an sp2 orbital), but everyone could do with remembering that Chaucer's pilgrims are headed to Canterbury to pay homage to Thomas Becket. Knowledge makes a lot of life easier, and it allows us to raise our conversations above the banal. It would make life like a class in which everyone has done his homework: we don't need to establish the base every time we approach a subject. If we're talking about Galileo, we should KNOW what Copernicus has already contributed and what Ptolemy has argued.
This is probably the biggest lamentation I have, is that the acquisition of knowledge is difficult, very difficult. It comes easier to some, but most of us have to work very hard to acquire it. For that reason, we tend to become lazy. We read 'A Christmas Carol' when we should have read 'David Copperfield'. We learn some French or Spanish when we should be learning Latin. We learn about Madrid's 'culture' when we should be reading 'Don Quixote'. Americans are the best when it comes to sidestepping actual work.
The problem, of course, is that we become ill-informed. We may never know how much America is hated if we only watch FOX news. We may never understand evolution if we don't try to learn what it really is. And we will be forever foreigners if we don't start learning some other languages -- we will even be foreigners in our own country soon if we do not know Spanish. Why do we stop the immigrants from coming into the US? Why do we try to censor the radio and TV, and ban video games? Make no mistake, it is laziness.
We don't want our cushy jobs taken and we don't want to have to learn aNOTHER language (one is enough, right?). We would hate to have to raise our children ourselves and actually teach them right from wrong ourselves, so we'll just make sure NO ONE can listen to eminem or play GTA. The fact is, many of us grow up with these things (myself included), and we listen to eminem and Dre and play GTA and Halo, and we still know right from wrong. My parents raised me, as many parents do, to know good from bad regardless of what I see or hear.
I want to make an argument against authoritative rule (raising your children kind of rule), something about how religion reinforces one's dependence on authority, and so those whose parents say (ridiculous) things like "my country, right or wrong" begin to stop questioning someone who, say, invades a country on totally false pretenses. But I don't feel like making that argument, though I feel it is accurate.
Lazy ass Americans. God forbid we have to earn our keep and compete with others.
2 comments:
My first observation is that many of your examples of general knowledge are quite specific. Caesar's invasion of Gaul is quite an important event, but is dwarfed by the others listed (in reference to our own culture). I must admit that I know only the approximate date, but I am not bothered by my ignorance. Your definition of general knowledge is rather narrow. The "ignorant" populous knows much more about many events that you have little idea about. The best example I can think of is sports events. Conclusions regarding “general knowledge” are therefore quite subjective. We do not need this sort of ammunition. Such bits of fact amount to no more than a line on a card in trivial pursuit. The specifics are worthless, it is the large ideas that matter. The fact that Columbus voyaged in the year 1492 has absolutely no bearing on what he did. Most important about his journey is not even that he “discovered” the Americas, but that he returned with goods that were foreign to the Europeans. I cannot think of any individual fact more important than the idea of bringing back alien goods that dominated the European economy. This large idea is supported by numerous specific facts.
Your comments on learning to forget are interesting, but the phenomena can be explained quite logically. It is the result of structuring the education system around test taking. If the sole goal of education is to possess a certificate, and it is a test that demonstrates the necessary competence then it follows that the goal of education is to pass a test. Examinations often demand the minutest of details, and thus a strategy to learn these details quickly and efficiently is devised. The goal is merely to remember the details long enough to pass an exam. If the structure of education was fundamentally changed, to encourage or perhaps mandate learning for the sake of learning or perhaps learning to benefit humanity, the way that knowledge is evaluated and thus acquired would change in response.
It is true that some information is made for reference, but only that which is so specific that it has very little application outside the article in which it was published. The best example I can think of for this is some very specific vapor-liquid equilibrium equation of states for two specific liquids under very precise conditions. The example you chose to describe the shape of a pi bond in an sp2 orbital (actually, there is no pi bond within a hybridized orbital, it exists because there is an orbital left unhybridized), is quite important to the conceptualization of the shape of nearly any molecule. Molecular shapes play a much larger role in our daily lives than the ramblings of men who died hundreds of years ago. It is through understanding these shapes that we are able to have medicines that work, commodity chemicals, gasoline and processed foods.
Knowledge does not make our lives easier. The fact that I understand the movement of electrons in organic synthesis reactions does not enable me to be a better farmer, nor does my understanding of Bakunin’s theories of anarchy assist me in baking bread. While this knowledge is nice to have, it does not bear an importance close to that which you ascribe to it. Such specifics have nothing to do with daily life and, more importantly, survival. The need for everyone to have a detailed knowledge of history and literature and chemistry is nonexistent.
The problem, as I noted earlier, is not misinformation. The problem is lack of desire. But this lack of desire stems not from laziness, but from a distortion of virtues. With the rise of capitalism, the desire to learn has been supplanted with the desire to make money. More recently, knowledge has been considered to be a way to make money and education has been on the rise, but only for the purpose of accruing capital. In seeking education as a means to capital, learning becomes work. According to Marx, work is, by its very nature, undesirable when it is done for an external means. I am unsure where you are going, as you abruptly lost focus somewhere near the end there.
As for raising children without an authoritative rule, that is a preposterous idea. Perhaps for adults that is a reasonable idea, but children lack the ability to make choices for themselves. They are lacking in experience and knowledge necessary for a rational decision making process. I would argue that religion does not reinforce dependence on authority, at least not on human authority. In theory most religions teach quite the opposite—that authorities created by man have little standing (or should anyway). Anyone who says “my country, right or wrong” has profoundly misunderstood the reasons for this country’s founding. It is questioning authority that makes revision and change possible.
I find your last line quite striking. Lazy ass Americans? Why? Quite an odd conclusion to draw so quickly. You blame the people for their own fate (a rather western idea), yet fail to realize that may very well not be their fault. As I noted earlier, it is the pursuit of capital that motivates us and we did not choose to be raised this way, it just happened. They are merely trapped by the system, forced by those before them and those above them to perpetuate the ideas. Adopting a more Buddhist view of this problem, one would say that the Americans are ignorant of the benefits of not being lazy or, more specifically, not striving only to gain wealth. Moving on, “God forbid.” Well, I do understand you are an atheist or perhaps an anti-theist, but you are well read. This statement shows a very poor understanding of God (or at least a contemporary Christian God). Why should an omnipotent infinite being concern herself with what our country does. While nearly all nations attempt to make a case for being sponsored by a deity, it is almost certainly not the case. Using Kierkegaard’s statements on faith, it is easy to see that God, as it were, would find no interest in a human construct so abstract as a country. As for the final part, “we have to earn our keep and compete with others.” Why do we need to compete? And what does it mean to “earn our keep?” These, like earlier comments, are clearly more capitalist ideas. There are many things that are exceedingly more important than making sure we as a population are more wealthy or educated or more anything than another group of people. I fail to see how our continued exploitation of less developed countries is justified by the hope of “competing with others.” We do not need to compete with others, we need to help others. While the US and the EU duke it out for economic superiority, millions of humans die in Africa from AIDS and starvation and genocide every year. Humans no different than you or I suffer from your drive to “earn our keep and compete with others.” To avoid a rant on such subjects I will press onward. To “earn our keep” implies that the harder we work the more we will get. Why, then, would we be interested in such trivial education as you mention earlier? If the goal is to benefit economically, then there is no need to pursue education for the sake of education.
Interesting to know.
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