Define a Generally Educated Person

Home work for Retreat.

If a Fool Persist in his Folly,
he becomes Wise.

The Road of Excess leads to
the Palace of Wisdom

Wm Blake

2 bumper sticker on the backs of my I-lids.
I'm counting on them.

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What is a generally educated person? Peer Review 7:4-7.

"List five ideas or skills you want all our students to learn. "

1. The pleasures and sport and art of "argo" argument: building up a
shared "shine" is what the word "argument" originally described.
Edification (as differentiated from "education")--a collaborative deal.

2. Dialectic I. "talking across (dia) the talk"--which is to say: the
ability to not only be talking (arguing) about some token topic, but
also to be talking about HOW the talk is being "talked."

3. Dialectic II. the familiar thesis <--> antithesis relationship:
worthy opposition where the "enemy" is loved so as to keep
IT (argument) in play-- knowing that sustaining the
converse-action will generate emergent phenomenon and
values and synthesis of the kind that does not diminish the
opposition of the terms of the opposition.

4. In other words: they might could learn and practice
"the Liberal Art" (not to be conflated, collapsed, and
confused with the ideas and skills of the liberalarts--
those majors and minors they study for credit and
accreditation.

5. For my 5th "five," I give Dean Kahl my proxy.

What is a Generally Educated Person?

List and compile:

5 persons,
5 places
5 musical or artistic pieces
5 books

that I would want ALL our students to know,
visit, see or hear, read so as possibly to
become a Generally Educated person?

I can't think this way.

A lot of folks on Face Book seem able to play
this kind of numbers game--but it's beyond me.
It doesn’t matter.

There are no kinds of deals like this that ALL
students should experience, and while I guess
the benefit of such polling is that it says some
thing about the responder: it says nothing about
curricula--except that it seems to assume that
Education and General Education can be
determined in terms of "things" --"nouns"--
events--leveled to the common sense.
As opposed to processes.

Anyone might could argue with me on this.
As Neils Bohr says the opposite of a
profound truth is another profound truth;
not only that but he says: "oh, I see we are
generating paradox: we must be making progress.

" Something like that is what he said. Close to it.,
I guess if one of our students could meet him
(dead or alive), we could nail it down: exactly
what he said. & be sure.

THAT right THERE --the arguing out (and sustained)
of the value (useful-to-useless ratios) of playing with polling
for Gen Ed purposes is what IT's all about.

T, I said.
Do I have to be spelling IT out?
Putting IT In play. Us in play. Students in play.
Play & Be Played. School & Be Schooled etc.

The what don't matter so much. Tokens. Got to have
them to play but they don't have to nailed down in
5 Best terms. We do that with movies & it helps for
selecting DVD's maybe. But it's a distraction as far as
determining GEN ED-ing, I'd say.

This is all "for the sake of argument" which is the
heart of academics, don't you agree? Getting better
and GOOD at it. That would be my Gen Ed dream

Gen Ed:
Ways of Talking
Ways of Thinking
Ways of Knowing

Not to be confused with persons, places, things.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the
same level of thinking that created them." AE

Could be a shibboleth, thorn in the flesh, pea under the mattress:
that we attempt to track “the same level" (would level be the same
as “kind”) of thinking that is habitual and familiar so as to put it
in play with antitheses and antagony.

Shoot me and make the world a better place.

xxxooo, Sam