--- Forwarded Message from "Edmund Dente" <[log in to unmask]> --- >Subject: Culture of Entertainment and Training >Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 09:27:08 -0400 >Thread-Topic: Culture of Entertainment and Training >Thread-Index: AcSnulkZlHnY572SQXGzjUvJsBwd4g== >From: "Edmund Dente" <[log in to unmask]> >To: "Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum" <[log in to unmask]> In a terrific piece on current academic culture as "All Entertainment All the Time" in the latest <<Poets & Writers Magazine >> http://www.pw.org/mag/teachersguide/indexloun.html Mark Edmundson discusses the use of computers in Humanities instruction: By putting a world of facts at the end of a key-stroke, computers have made facts, their command, their manipulation, their ordering, central to what now can qualify as humanistic education. The result is to suspend reflection about the differences among wisdom, knowledge, and information. Everything that can be accessed online can seem equal to everything else, no datum more important or more profound than any other. Thus the possibility presents itself that there really is not more wisdom; there is no more knowledge; there is only information. No thought is a challenge or an affront to what one currently believes. OK, so we've seen this sort of response many times before. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating, thought provoking column. One line in particular went right into my little book of handy quotations, and I want to share it with you all. In a short discussion of student-written course evaluations, Edmundson notes the "Columbia University instructor who issued a two-part question at the end of his literature course. Part one: What book in the course did you most dislike; part two: What flaws of intellect or character does that dislike point up in you?" Now that's my kind of evaluation form! Cheers! Ed ================================================= Edmund N. Dente Director, Language Media Center Asst Director, Media Services 617.627.3036 Tufts University [log in to unmask] Medford, MA 02155 http://ase.tufts.edu/lmc