Not Your Father's Oldsmobile

“But what is it ABOUT
academics that sets us apart?”
(E.W.)

or could?

Dear Evan (and Paul, and Ron)

I can’t remember the college, but I
remember the (70's) article about a
place where teachers were encouraged
to teach a special course OUTSIDE
their professional area of expertise.

As amateurs. (“for the love of it”)

The writer of the article was an
English teacher who offered an
experience in Euclidean Geometry
—starting with the first postulate
(points and a straight line) and
collaboratively reinventing the
wheel if I can mix meta force..

What a mess of in-the-classroom
research. Collaborative genius
(much failure, naturally; dubious clarity.)

All the teacher had as resource was
his ability to transfer his trans-curricular
isomorphing experience as a doctor of
philosophy

—hm,
let’s see,
very interesting:
what’s your point,
for crying out loud? How straight is straight?
o my…

And of course: his ability to encourage the
confusion of his students to mother some
invention.

They’d get so lost wandering the grooves
of academe, they’d call in expertise from
the Math Dept which proved unsatisfactory:
already so far down some other lines of
labyrinthine thinking that an expert offered
no solace or solution no matter his expertise.

The college offered a batch of these special
“experiential” academic ventures: a kind of
cerebral/affective whirl-wide gen-ed opportunity
and students who signed up knew it was not
going to be your dad’s oldsmobile. Not for
everyone.

And of course wouldn’t evaluate it on the
same basis as your standard offering,
assessmental-wise; No ordinary
syllabi-driven cover-the-ground
aims and objectives sucking up
to southern accreditation
associations of colleges
and schools making
sure we got our
tickets punched,
damnit..

Start from old scratch.
Zero-Base Thinking.
Re-invent the squeals.
Stunning!
Pre-requisite for study.

Now a days, everyone
with a lap top dancing
Apple on your knees
got keys to the universe
so to speak & I expect
you people in High Tech
ought to be spilling over
with new ways to configure
hire education & liberal
art—the media being
the message we ought
to be paying our efficient
attention to.

School should look
pretty different
pretty soon.

xxxooo, Sam