Something Else That Changed My Life

I didn't have an incredibly stimulating childhood in terms of intellectual development. I was pretty much a latch-key kid from around 8 years on. Both my parents worked -- they had to to make ends meet -- and I wound up fending for myself. I've discussed discussed the role that board games and computer games played in my life, but there's something else that was also important. The Rankin-Bass version of the Hobbit that appeared on tv. It was, looking back, a pretty cheesy affair, with Orson Bean as Bilbo Baggins, and Otto Preminger as Thorin. But to me, a working-class kid with little to no exposure to anything remotely intellectual, it was a godsend. Afterwards, I read Tolkien and that led me to Medieval history and that led me to other histories and historians. It took me to college and graduate school and eventually to where I am today.

I know lots of cultural critics rail against the adverse impact of tv on kids and I sort-of get that. But there's another side to all this. Television can also open up worlds to kids who might otherwise have no exposure to anything beyond their own neighborhood. My only point here is that none of this cultural impact stuff is not a simplistic affair.

I also know that this sort of thing smacks of the nerdiest of all pursuits. I guess I'm guilty as charged in that regard. As I got older, I became embarrassed by Tolkien and didn't exactly wear it on my sleeve. But as I enter my 40s, I've become considerably more appreciative of what Tolkien's works did for me. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Tolkien (and war games) got me out of my hometown and off to university. I've strayed off my original trajectory and take a dedidedly leftist turn, but it's the path I took.

There are more romantic and sophisticated paths to a life of the mind; my parents didn't read Proust to me or send me off to learn ancient Greek in Athens, but that's my story and I've grown proud of it over the years.

Life On Other Planets?

There's a great article in Technology Review where Nick Bostrom hopes that we don't find life on other planets. It's tough to summarize, but worth a look.

My (Unfinished) Dissertation

It was around 11 years ago -- almost to the date, I think -- that I officially withdrew from my PhD program. I was teaching full time in Manhattan and my wife and I were raising a son (another one was soon on the way, and I'd have a daughter after that). Finishing the dissertation just didn't make sense. I guess in some ways I regret not finishing it up, but I generally don't think about it too much at all.

Recently, though, I was talking to a friend about my dissertation topic, and I realized how important it had been in shaping my subsequent career. My topic was academic traditionalism in late seventeenth-century at the University of Salamanca in Spain. On the surface that seems rather obscure and when I tell people about it, they tend to politely change the subject. My friends tend not to be so kind and make fun of its obscurantism. But bear with me and I actually do think there's a story worth telling.

The University of Salamanca was one of Europe's premier universities in the sixteenth century and would have rivaled Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris. Its professorate and graduates held the leading positions in the Spanish Empire and its intellectual influence was world renown. During the course of the seventeenth century, however, and the impact of the Scientific Revolution spread across Europe, Salamanca got left behind. Actually, it chose not to move ahead. The school, rightly proud of its past achievements, held on tightly to these traditions during the seventeenth century. The result was that by the middle of the eighteenth century, Salamanca was an intellectual backwater, all but ignored by Europe and even within Spain itself. Today, the university is a great place to study and produces many great scholars, but it has never regained its prominence.

What had happened? The University became irrelevant. Caught up in its own version of an old boy network, Salamanca ignored developments in science, philosophy, and math. Medical research, once an important part of the school, atrophied and eventually died out. My research chronicled the repeated attempts to reform the school and the failure of every single attempt at reform. The University was faced with an enormous revolution in human thought and it blinked.

So how does this relate to my career? My research makes me very keenly aware of how easy it is to miss earth-shattering trends. The faculty at Salamanca was an intelligent group of scholars whose achievements I deeply respect. They argued in favor of the rights of American Indians in the midst of the genocide of the Conquistadors. They argued in favor of economic justice in the midst of the commercial revolution and studied Copernicus when heliocentricism was denounced through much of Europe. But they missed the Scientific Revolution.

As I look around at the changes we are experiencing today with technology, I wonder if we are in the midst of something as big as the Scientific Revolution or is this more of a passing fad? I used the believe that nothing today would change anything fundamental in how we're teaching and what we're teaching. I'm not so sure anymore. If these changes are a "paradigm shift", then what does that mean to us? Am I one of those professors in Salamanca, serenely secure in the justice of my cause but being left behind?

Global Voices

I ran across a pretty amazing web site -- Global Voices Online that is essentially a collection of blogs from around the world. What I like best is that it covers news stories that most media outlets (including the BBC) aren't covering. A sample from their front page: food shortages in the Caribbean; strikes against Mubarak in Egypt that are being organized on FaceBook; election results in Paraguay. It's quite a collection.

More on 21st Century Teaching

Here's a slide show by a teacher names David Truss that looks at the potential of using Web 2.0 in the classroom. It's a bit in-your-face in terms of its attitude toward traditional teaching, but it does raise some interesting challenges.

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Teaching on YouTube

Open Culture has a really interesting article by a Pitzer College professor who taught an entire course on YouTube. It's a really fascinating exploration about the potential losses and gains to be had from teaching on web 2.0. In short, the professor did NOT like the experience and felt that teaching in this manner cannot replace a live classroom experience.

I'm particularly interested in this sort of thing because at the NAIS conference this spring futurist Faith Popcorn predicted that a lot of what we do in the classroom will migrate online in the next 20 years. This Open Culture article points out more than a few bumps in the road. I don't think that this article necessarily puts any nails in the coffin of this sort of thing, but I do think that it gives proponents of web 2.0's use in the classroom (myself included) something to consider before rushing blindly into the new frontier.

Something Else That Changed My Life

I didn't have an incredibly stimulating childhood in terms of intellectual development. I was pretty much a latch-key kid from around 8 years on. Both my parents worked -- they had to to make ends meet -- and I wound up fending for myself. I discussed the role that board games and computer games played in my life, but there's something else that was also important. The Rankin-Bass version of the Hobbit that appeared on tv. It was, looking back, a pretty cheesy affair, with Orson Bean as Bilbo Baggins, and Otto Preminger as Thorin. But to me, a working-class kid with little to no exposure to anything remotely intellectual, it was a godsend. Afterwards, I read Tolkien and that led me to Medieval history and that led me to other histories and historians. It took me to college and graduate school and eventually to where I am today.

I know lots of cultural critics rail against the adverse impact of tv on kids and I sort-of get that. But there's another side to all this. Television can also open up worlds to kids who might otherwise have no exposure to anything beyond their own neighborhood. My only point here is that none of this cultural impact stuff is not a simplistic affair.

I also know that this sort of thing smacks of the nerdiest of all pursuits. I guess I'm guilty as charged in that regard. As I got older, I became embarrassed by Tolkien and didn't exactly wear it on my sleeve. But as I enter my 40s, I've become considerably more appreciative of what Tolkien's works did for me. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Tolkien (and war games) got me out of my hometown and off to university.

There are more romantic and sophisticated paths to a life of the mind; my parents didn't read Proust to me or send me off to learn ancient Greek in Athens, but that's my story and I've grown proud of it over the years. What my parents did give me was room to grow and the freedom to develop my own personality. I wasn't molded or shaped by organized activities. I know there are shortcomings to that style of childrearing, but I chose my own path and love what I do.