User:Robbie/rmcc narrative bio 2pp: Difference between revisions
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<p>Simultaneous with the book’s publication, I received tenure, and within the domain of Ortega’s influence, the work brought recognition from writers like Jacques Ellul and Salvador de Madariaga. took note of it. It all proved to be a short-lived high-point that I found difficult to move beyond. I began to drift, dreaming of life as a public intellectual, uncertain what should come next. I found it difficult to establish reflections on political and educational thinking from Rousseau forward and explorations of how modes of communication and material life affected personal and collective self-formation as topics of broad public interest. And in an education school ethos, many professors and students perceived my thinking to be tangential, too distant from the realities of public schooling.</p> | <p>Simultaneous with the book’s publication, I received tenure, and within the domain of Ortega’s influence, the work brought recognition from writers like Jacques Ellul and Salvador de Madariaga. took note of it. It all proved to be a short-lived high-point that I found difficult to move beyond. I began to drift, dreaming of life as a public intellectual, uncertain what should come next. I found it difficult to establish reflections on political and educational thinking from Rousseau forward and explorations of how modes of communication and material life affected personal and collective self-formation as topics of broad public interest. And in an education school ethos, many professors and students perceived my thinking to be tangential, too distant from the realities of public schooling.</p> | ||
<p>At 33, should I try to move elsewhere? Perhaps, but with tenure among colleagues I liked in a major university in a great city I loved, I stayed put, committed to turning my youthful commitment to study into a full theory and practice of education. In life, a question can become a quest.</p> | <p>At 33, should I try to move elsewhere? Perhaps, but with tenure among colleagues I liked in a major university in a great city I loved, I stayed put, committed to turning my youthful commitment to study into a full theory and practice of education. In life, a question can become a quest.</p> | ||
< | <blockquote>Can each person find within their actual circumstances resources requisite for pursuing comprehensive, life-long, voluntary study? Can each, grasp actual opportunity to study as fully as they will find worthy what their vital concerns compelled them to devote themselves to?</blockquote> | ||
<p>Through the 1970s, my essays addressed these and related questions. I properly published a few, among them, “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1971_place_for_study.pdf Towards a Place for Study in a World of Instruction]” (1971). Others, like “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1973_universal_voluntary_study.pdf Universal Voluntary Study]” (1973), “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1976_problems_to_predicaments_hew.pdf From Problems to Predicaments]” (1976), and “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1977_imperative_of_judgment.pdf The Imperative of Judgment]” (1977), I circulated as not quite finished manuscripts. My experience broadened through a year of solitary immersion in the milieu surrounding Frankfurt’s Goethe-Universität (1973-74), and through a wholly different whirlwind as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in Washington (1975-76).</p> | <p>Through the 1970s, my essays addressed these and related questions. I properly published a few, among them, “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1971_place_for_study.pdf Towards a Place for Study in a World of Instruction]” (1971). Others, like “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1973_universal_voluntary_study.pdf Universal Voluntary Study]” (1973), “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1976_problems_to_predicaments_hew.pdf From Problems to Predicaments]” (1976), and “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1977_imperative_of_judgment.pdf The Imperative of Judgment]” (1977), I circulated as not quite finished manuscripts. My experience broadened through a year of solitary immersion in the milieu surrounding Frankfurt’s Goethe-Universität (1973-74), and through a wholly different whirlwind as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in Washington (1975-76).</p> | ||
<p>As the decade ended, I felt fully committed to my quest to make universal, voluntary study actually feasible for all, but I had formed deep doubts that I could do much about it as a scholar and critic, doubts I expressed in “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1979_dynamics_decline_education.pdf The Dynamics of Decline: Why Education Can No Longer Be Liberal]” (1979). I had become primed to change the course of my quest significantly, and I became a historical materialist of sorts, bent on making digital technologies serve everyone as an affordable, effective place to study.</p> | <p>As the decade ended, I felt fully committed to my quest to make universal, voluntary study actually feasible for all, but I had formed deep doubts that I could do much about it as a scholar and critic, doubts I expressed in “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1979_dynamics_decline_education.pdf The Dynamics of Decline: Why Education Can No Longer Be Liberal]” (1979). I had become primed to change the course of my quest significantly, and I became a historical materialist of sorts, bent on making digital technologies serve everyone as an affordable, effective place to study.</p> | ||