Texts:1989 Kant in the Culture Factory: Difference between revisions
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<p>Let us leave this intriguing question. Here are some things that might be done to create an environment of study conducive to the recognition of objects and concepts. Design is, happily, an empirical endeavor that starts with practical postulates based on partial understanding and then leads through trial and reflection to strengthened understanding and to improved postulates. First off, make sure that the student's work environment has many potential objects of recognition in it. Present these clearly; exemplify them well; use them consistently. Be honest that many matters carry with them problems of recognition that need to be surmounted. It may be better to explain the difficulties of recognition that a student faces than to try to engender a premature recognition.</p> | <p>Let us leave this intriguing question. Here are some things that might be done to create an environment of study conducive to the recognition of objects and concepts. Design is, happily, an empirical endeavor that starts with practical postulates based on partial understanding and then leads through trial and reflection to strengthened understanding and to improved postulates. First off, make sure that the student's work environment has many potential objects of recognition in it. Present these clearly; exemplify them well; use them consistently. Be honest that many matters carry with them problems of recognition that need to be surmounted. It may be better to explain the difficulties of recognition that a student faces than to try to engender a premature recognition.</p> | ||
<p>Note how certain books for infants center on the problem of recognition, presenting sample objects for tactile recognition, a piece of .satin for smooth, sandpaper for rough, and so on. Infants begin acquiring their culture through study; adults do not instruct but situate all sorts of chosen objects in the infant's universe. This same practice carries over into the nursery school and the first few grades where the good teacher fills the environment with invitations to discovery, to awareness, to the posing of that wonderful question, "What's that?" This practice recedes in the later grades largely because the objects that require recognition become increasingly numerous and increasingly abstract. Yet it is the principle embodied in Hirsch's ideas about cultural literacy.</p><dfn>This needs to be checked and re-worked. You can get a sense of the problem by consulting <i>The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy</i> to clarify my reference here. The entries are brief and not sufficient to convey the meanings people seek to convey with cultural references. Take what | <p>Note how certain books for infants center on the problem of recognition, presenting sample objects for tactile recognition, a piece of .satin for smooth, sandpaper for rough, and so on. Infants begin acquiring their culture through study; adults do not instruct but situate all sorts of chosen objects in the infant's universe. This same practice carries over into the nursery school and the first few grades where the good teacher fills the environment with invitations to discovery, to awareness, to the posing of that wonderful question, "What's that?" This practice recedes in the later grades largely because the objects that require recognition become increasingly numerous and increasingly abstract. Yet it is the principle embodied in Hirsch's ideas about cultural literacy.</p><dfn>This needs to be checked and re-worked. You can get a sense of the problem by consulting <i>The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy</i> to clarify my reference here. The entries are brief and not sufficient to convey the meanings people seek to convey with cultural references. Take what someone might find out about Henry Higgins from the <i>Dictionary</i>.</dfn><br> | ||
<dl><dt><i>Pygmalion</i></dt><dd>A play by George Bernard SHAW, about a professor, Henry Higgins, who trains a poor, uneducated girl, Eliza Doolittle, to act and speak like a lady. Shaw based his story on a tale from Greek Mythology about a sculptor who carves the statue of a woman and falls in love with it (see PYGMALION under "Mythology and Folklore"). Higgins and Eliza develop a strong bond, and he is furious when she announces her intention to marry someone else. The MUSICAL COMEDY MY FAIR LADY is an adaptation of Pygmalion. (E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. <i>The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy</i>. p. 130.)</dd><br> | <dl><dt><i>Pygmalion</i></dt><dd>A play by George Bernard SHAW, about a professor, Henry Higgins, who trains a poor, uneducated girl, Eliza Doolittle, to act and speak like a lady. Shaw based his story on a tale from Greek Mythology about a sculptor who carves the statue of a woman and falls in love with it (see PYGMALION under "Mythology and Folklore"). Higgins and Eliza develop a strong bond, and he is furious when she announces her intention to marry someone else. The MUSICAL COMEDY MY FAIR LADY is an adaptation of Pygmalion. (E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. <i>The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy</i>. p. 130.)</dd><br> | ||