I hate to admit this but knowledge comes and goes. There is only so much I can hold in my head. I do still remember who fought the American civil war and I know who "won". But many wars fought in China, Africa, Europe and South America are not clear in my mind. Does this mean I was poorly educated? What about the date of the invention of the cotton gin? How about the steamboat?
Ok, forget history. How about the chemical composition of alcohol? How about the assumptions behind analysis of covariance? What is the French word for 'sheath'? Are the Philippines and New Zealand in the same time zone?
In a previous time, we were ignorant but we felt confident about our knowledge. We could read Roman numerals and we knew the quadratic equation. We could recite the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. We knew the capital city of our state and we knew the population figure stated by the US Census Bureau for our town.
Nowadays, things are more mixed, more confused. We are no longer sure how much of any given subject we "ought" to know. We don't even know which subjects are best. The old idea (maybe 100 to 200 years old) is that a basic education should enable us to read, to write and to do arithmetic. But time moves on and changes things. We have calculators, cash registers and computers. When you do a rapid and accurate calculation mentally, we don't believe you. We only trust the output of one of the devices mentioned.
It is still fun and handy to be able to read your native tongue. We are more aware than ever that Americans are only 5% of the world and that much of the world cannot read English. Quite a bit of the world cannot read writing in any language. It is still handy to be able to write yourself a reminder that you can decipher at a later date but maybe we should be requiring our learners to use recorders and video recorders. These days, Google Translate can take a written phrase in most languages and show what it means in English. But do our kids know how to use Google Translate? Do they even know how to find Google Translate?
Writing? Hand writing?? Don't make me laugh! In many schools, handwriting is not even taught. Sure, with tight budgets, neither is keyboarding. Kids are just supposed to "pick" up the hunt and peck method. Better still use one of the clever devices and speak to it, letting it write out what you say.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
