[miscellaneous] 10/2 Thoughts on Learning

October 2016

-These days, I’m constantly confronting the limits of my biography, both spatial and temporal. It is hard to understand the past and therefore the present is  deeply opaque. Stagflation of the 70′s. The Vietnam War. The rise of Japan in the 60′s. World War 2. It is so hard to experience these moments and appreciate the incredible gravity of these events.

-In addition to this idea of biographical impediments, I’ve also been thinking about the relationship between frequency/repetition on truth/perception/common sense understandings. I don’t think we subject Knowledge to rigorous analysis. We more or less accept what is available. It’s a very crude method. We just take what’s there.

-The K-12 education system fails to teach the interconnectedness of events, opting instead for linear, sequential presentations of facts and figures. Critical debates in historiography are completely disregarded. As a result of this, I feel like my world is constantly being flipped upside down in my college classes. I suppose there might be some sense to not introducing Focault and Chomsky to third graders. But I think at least some of the more easy going books like Howard Zin’s A People’s History could be introduced to secondary students.