Knowledge

March 8, 2017 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Education’s Big Lie, Part III: Visual Thinkers in the Spotlight

Throughout history, some of the greatest minds, artists, scientists, and inventors of humanity have been visual thinkers. Some of them realized this and talked openly about their thinking style. In the case of others, we must deduce their primary thinking patterns from the evidence that they left behind concerning their thought processes. In the presentation of my case, I would like to call three witnesses.

My first witness is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. Leonardo was born in 1452 and died in 1519. Even though only 15 of his paintings have survived, for centuries Leonardo has been considered one of the greatest painters who ever lived. He was also a superior sculptor, mathematician, engineer, scientist, botanist, anatomist, and musician. He has been labeled the archetypical Renaissance man.

Since we can’t ask Leonardo any questions in person and he never spoke directly about his thinking processes, we must rely on his personal notes that have been preserved in codices for his testimony. The following example is a page from one such codex.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch of his intricate design for water wheels and screws to be used in an irrigation system. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain because it is a faithful reproduction of a work created by an author who died in 1519.

Leonardo’s codices are dominated by sketches with writing intermittently spaced throughout the work. This seems to indicate that Leonardo’s creative process began with visual images of his paintings and inventions. I have no further questions of this witness.

For my next witness, I would like to call Albert Einstein. Einstein was born in 1879 and died in 1955. He was a world famous physicist known for his work on relativity theory and quantum physics. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Time Magazine named him the Person of the Century on December 31, 1999. In the introduction to their article, they described Einstein as “… the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliche in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, Albert Einstein’s shaggy-haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed.”

Einstein may be best known for his famous equation: E = mc². This equation indicates that mass and energy are two sides of the same coin. They are directly related to each other via a natural constant which is the speed of light squared.

Since Einstein is dead, we are no longer able to ask him about his thought processes. However, many times during his lifetime, he was asked what was the secret to his genius. The answer that I found most enlightening came from a private conversation with an unnamed friend. Alice Calaprice later included snippets from this conversation in her book, The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Consider the following example: “All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration…. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason…Imagination is more important than knowledge”

The most direct answer to whether Einstein was a visual or verbal thinker came from the professor himself. His answer to this question was referenced in Abraham Pais’ book Subtle is the Lord: The Life and the Science of Albert Einstein. At a physics conference in 1922, Einstein told the audience that he used images to solve his problems, and only later he sometimes found the words to explain those solutions. I believe this indicates that Einstein was primarily a visual thinker.

For my third witness, I call Temple Grandin to the stand. She is still very much alive. Grandin has a Ph.D. in animal science from the University of Illinois and is a professor at Colorado State University. She is a very vocal spokesperson for visual thinking, so I am sure that Grandin agrees with this position. After growing up with autism, Grandin became a highly functional and accomplished adult. She is the author of six books, including the national bestsellers Thinking in Pictures and Animals in Translation. In the publicity blurbs for Thinking in Pictures, Grandin stated, “Rigid academic and social expectations could wind up stifling a mind that while it might struggle to conjugate a verb could one day take us to distant stars.” Temple delivered a February 2010 TED talk entitled The World Needs All Kinds of Minds.

In the first post, Education’s Big Lie, Part I: Introduction , of this series, I began with an example where words failed children. However, we know that words not only fail children. They often fail adults with physical and mental challenges, to which I can well attest. At times, words can also be insufficient for well-functioning adults. In my next post, Education’s Big Lie, Part IV: Human Arenas Where Words Often Play Second Fiddle, I will deal with a number of areas where words can easily be in second or third place to other means of expressions.

June 11, 2016 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Importance of Investing in Real Knowledge

Benjamin Franklin reportedly said: “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays best interest.” This particular quote emphasizes the importance for an individual to acquire knowledge at any price. In some ways it is analogous to Christ’s teaching from the sermon on the mount:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6: 19-21, KJV)

Both were teaching that there are things that are more valuable than material wealth. Whereas Christ was teaching the supremacy of spiritual things, Franklin raised the flag of intellectualism. However, it seems both teachings were lost on much of American culture for the first 150 years of this country’s existence. The predominant, driving force in the United States from 1776 until 1929 was materialism, the accumulation of wealth and material things.

Beginning in the 1930s, American society in general started transitioning from an industrial society to a new type of culture where value was based on technology, information and the use of information. Fritz Machlup was the first economist to popularize the term information society. Following in his foot steps, Peter Drucker was credited by BusinessWeek with the invention of the science of management. In 1966, he was the first author to give currency to the terms knowledge economy and knowledge worker. A knowledge economy is an economy in which growth is dependent on the quantity, quality and accessibility of available information, rather than the means of production.

By the year 2000, the concept of the knowledge worker had permeated all levels of all industries. Drucker can easily be seen as a disciple of Franklin…put your money in knowledge. In 2004, in Handbook of Business Strategy, Vol. 5 Iss: 1, George Elliott wrote: “Cognitive excellence: our people are our most important asset.” A year later, Baruch Lev, director of the Intangibles Research Project at New York University Stern School of Business, stated that “people are the most important asset of most companies.” Not only their knowledge, but the people themselves had become assets. This set off a firestorm of arguments. Are people to be treated like material resources?

However, in the 21st century, people are not the only intangible assets. In Lev’s earlier work, he demonstrated that in 1980, the total value of many international corporations was fully accounted for by their tangible assets. Today, he estimates that 80 percent of their value is tied up in intangible assets — brands, patents and trademarks. Note, that he didn’t mention people or intellectual property. Franklin seems to be right. Investing in knowledge, both by individuals investing in their own knowledge and by corporations investing in their employees’ knowledge, pays off most handsomely.

I can’t argue with the main premise of Franklin’s maxim. However, I do think that today we take, and even Franklin in his day took too narrow a definition of knowledge. Franklin was placing his emphasis on “head” or content knowledge. I want to broaden the scope of knowledge to everything that can be an answer to the question, “What can I know?” How many different ways do we fill in the blank in the phrase, “I know ________.”

How many times have we said:

“I know something.” This is the content knowledge of a subject matter. This is what many of our school teachers asked us to learn.
“I know how to do something.” This is a skill that we learned or could do instinctively.
“I know what I like.” These are the values that I hold dear.
“I know myself.” This is personal knowledge that we generally believe that we don’t learn, but just know.
“I know that person.” This is social or relational knowledge.” Sometimes this knowledge is very deep and intense. Other times this knowledge is superficial at best, and is said to be a “nodding acquaintance.”
“I know God.” This is very personal and is on a different level from the material or physical world. This is spiritual or supernatural knowledge.

These six types of knowledge constitute whole or real knowledge. In another post I will more fully examine the six types of knowledge and how one can obtain such knowledge. In the meantime, like the television advertisement suggests, now is the time to start investing more in your future.

April 13, 2016 By B. Baylis 2 Comments

The Value of the Liberal Arts to the University

I have invited a friend and former colleague, Erik Benson, to offer the first guest post on By’s Musings. I first met Erik when I hired him at Cornerstone University in 2005. I was immediately impressed with this history instructor who brought history to life in the classroom and in the field. Less than one year later when I started CELT, the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Cornerstone University, he was an obvious choice to be part of the faculty leadership group. He has continued to impress students and colleagues at CU, where in 2013, he was voted “Professor of the Year.” He is currently Associate Professor of History, at CU, and Principal of ipsative, a company focusing on educational consulting and faculty development. If you would like to find out more about ipsative, please visit their website at ipsative.

This post grew out of a challenge that I set before Erik. Since I have been working on a project attempting to represent the many cultures that come together to form a university, I asked him to describe the ideal culture of history within the university setting. He eagerly took the challenge and expanded it to set history within the broader category of humanities and the liberal arts. This is the Erik that I knew at Cornerstone University. At least once a month, he would come by my office near the close of the day, stand in the open doorway, and ask, “Do you have a minute?” I almost always said, “Yes”, even though I know that the minute would end up more like an hour. Erik always had challenging questions about higher education in general and our university in particular. Together, we were working toward solutions for the tough, intractable problems facing higher education and our students. Some of those discussions are among my most memorable memories of my days at CU.

Without further ado, here is Erik’s post.

For what it’s worth: the value of the liberal arts to the university.

The last year has seen a seemingly endless stream of controversies in higher education. Among these were proposals to channel more government aid to students studying in “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields, at the expense of those studying in the liberal arts. In Kentucky, the governor recently suggested that students studying “French literature” should not receive any state financial aid.

Debt, jobs, and basements…
The arguments are pretty straightforward. STEM fields are more promising in terms of jobs for graduates, and there is an unmet demand in the US for people trained in these fields. Amidst public concerns about escalating college costs and the resulting student debt, governments ought to insure that they fund fields best suited to meet the needs of both employers and graduates.
There is a certain logic to this. The public concern about tuition and student debt is undeniable. Furthermore, evidence abounds that there is indeed a demand for workers in STEM fields that promise large salaries upon graduation. (In fact, there is high demand for workers in skilled trades that do not require a college degree at all. A Michigan factory owner recently told me recently that he cannot hire enough skilled tradespeople, even though he actively recruits throughout the US and abroad.) In turn, the numbers are less promising for those graduating with liberal arts degrees. The anecdote of the humanities graduate moving back into the parents’ basement has become popular lore. In sum, the desire to channel students toward STEM majors seems a perfectly reasonable response.

Not so fast…
Yet in fact this response is ill-considered. For one thing, it is based on the premise that US colleges are churning out a slew of (unemployed) liberal arts majors. As Fareed Zakaria notes in his book, In Defense of a Liberal Education, between 1971 and 2012, the number of graduates with degrees in English fell from 7.6 to 3.0 percent; the number of business graduates rose from 13.7 to 20.5 percent. Only one-third of all degrees were in fields that could be classified as “liberal arts,” and this number was matched by business and health majors alone. In short, the stories of hordes of unemployed liberal arts graduates living in their parents’ basements are exaggerated.
Beyond this dubious premise, the fact is that the liberal arts approach in American higher education has served students well. Zakaria contrasts it with European higher education systems, in which students are channeled into specific vocations well before they reach college age; those that go to college are few, and they receive a rather narrowly focused training in a field. In the US, college education has historically been more “general” in focus due to being in a dynamic, changing economy and society. In short, the liberal arts have prepared American graduates to be more responsive and flexible in a changing world.
Zakaria points to a real strength of the American liberal arts education, as both anecdotal and statistical evidence attests. Numerous studies reveal that graduates with liberal arts degrees actually have fiscally rewarding careers. One such study, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014, found that while liberal arts graduates initially lagged behind professional and pre-professional peers in salaries, over time they caught up and passed them. The study noted that this was due in no small part to graduate degrees earned by liberal arts majors, which enhanced their earning ability. (Interestingly, even in pre-professional and professional fields, a comparable percentage had a graduate degree, suggesting they too received an earnings boost from this.) Still, only the most short-sighted of people would argue a degree outside the liberal arts is a better financial bet; in fact, considering the investment a college education entails, one ought to be considering long-term earnings forecasts rather than merely the entry-level job, which seems to be the focus of the moment.

On second thought…
Why liberal arts degrees offer such long-term earning possibilities is an interesting question. The answer seems to lie in what Zakaria points out—they better prepare one for a changing environment. Vocationally focused educations prepare one for a specific job or career track that can be lucrative at the entry level, but may limit one’s advancement possibilities over time. (Put simply, one might be trained to press certain buttons, but that likely will not lead to workplace advancement.) Worse, as technological and business advances change the workplace, jobs and entire career tracks can come and go. As Thomas Friedman points out in The Earth is Flat, many programming jobs in the US have easily been outsourced to Asia, and won’t be coming back any time soon in light of the cost differentials. This is why many who train in narrowly tailored fields have found it necessary to return to college later in life—their education did not prepare them for the change. Lest we think we can anticipate much of this change, consider how many jobs and fields exist today that educators and politicians could not even fathom 20 years ago. As a senior vice president at the Association of American Colleges and Universities admitted, “We are not good at predicting what jobs are going to be required in five years and 10 years down the road.” It is simply not a reasonable expectation.
My wife’s career experience attests to many of the above points. A graduate of a liberal arts college with a major in history and international studies, she went on to earn an M.A. in Mass Communication. She since has worked in both higher education and marketing, and currently has a thriving business in content strategy and writing. Her mass communication degree offered her hands-on experience in the then-emerging field of web design and development, which cued her into the new forms of media. That said, a significant portion of the technical knowledge she gained is now outdated because of the rapid advances in the last decade. She actually points to her B.A. as being more valuable and foundational for her career. Her studies in history and global culture ingrained in her a broader, more strategic perspective. She also credits them for making her a good writer, which is her “bread and butter” today. Finally, they made her more self-aware and confident, all of which led her to easily transition between jobs and career tracks without need of returning to school. In short, she epitomizes what Zakaria says about the liberals arts—it made her responsive and adaptable in a changing world.

Making the case…
While studies exist of the earning power of the liberal arts, and many faculty can cite numerous anecdotes of successful graduates, there has been a general failure to “sell” this to politicians and the public. Many in “liberal arts” fields lack an interest in informing potential students, their parents, and the public at large the career possibilities (or even proudly resist the idea). Too often, the “case” consists of rather ethereal assertions about the value of the liberal arts, the “life of the mind,” and avoiding vocational obsession, none of which are wrong, but which are not applicable for many considering college, with its expense and commitment. In short, we need to do a better job making the case.
In my case, I have occasion to meet with prospective students and parents who visit our campus. I emphasize that the study of history offers them much in terms of “life of the mind,” but also in terms of career preparation. In addition to citing studies on earnings (which many do not know), I explain specifically what history offers to them—highly transferable skills in research, critical thinking, and communication which will be proven useful over time in a constantly changing job market. I point out that these not only work for someone who might pursue a traditional career in the field (e.g. academia), but also someone working in marketing or government. I encourage them to think of how they might pair the study of history with a major or minor in another field, such as business. I even encourage students in other majors (such as business) to meet credit requirements with an applicable history course; I’ve had a number of graduates tell me this turned out to be one of the most useful things they did in college. In short, I can show them the practical benefits of their study—and they usually come to see the value.
Ultimately, in considering the issue of financing higher education and the liberal arts, the real consideration ought not be mere cost, but value. People will pay more for something they believe is worth it; they are bothered when they feel they have paid for something that is not worth it. We in academics need to make a better case for the value of the liberal arts to students.

References:
Patricia Cohen, “A Rising Call to Promote STEM Education and Cut Liberal Arts Funding,” New York Times (22 February 2016), B1.

Thomas Friedman, The Earth is Flat (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2006).

Beckie Supiano, “How Liberal-Arts Majors Fare over the Long Haul,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (22 January 2014). http://chronicle.com/article/How-Liberal-Arts-Majors-Fare/144133 (Accessed 1 March 2016).

Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education (W.W. Norton and Co., 2015).

November 16, 2015 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

What Is the Difference Between Ethics and Ethical Behavior?

The past two weeks have been a huge struggle for me. I spent much of that time fighting the pain from an infected tooth which had a broken root. It took me several days to get an “emergency” appointment with my dentist. During that appointment the determination was quickly made that the very loose and painful tooth had to be extracted. Because of the infection, I had to take a full week run of antibiotics. In addition, I had to be taken off my blood thinners slowly. Thus, I had to wait another full week for the oral surgery. During that time, in the periods of calm generated by acetaminophen and benzocaine, I struggled with this post.

The question, “Why do people do what they do?” kept hitting me in the face.

When not sleeping, eating or working at my computer, I watched sports and newscasts on television. What did I see? 1) Two Presidential debates with candidates questioning the behavior of rivals and impugning their ethics; 2) A report of an automotive manufacturer installing software in its cars that only shuts off high carbon emissions when the car is being tested for those emissions; 3) A report of another automotive manufacturer not acting on knowledge of dangerous defects in its cars for years; 4) A report on dozens of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys passing around hundreds of emails with pornographic pictures and offensive stories; 5) A report on a State Attorney General indicted for leaking Grand Jury information and the commission of perjury by lying about it; 6) A report on a township supervisor voting positively on a zoning petition and building permit for a family member’s project; 7) A report on what appears to be wholesale, systematic doping by a country’s sports infrastructure in a recent Olympics; and 8) A popular race car driver appearing to intentionally wreck another popular driver in retaliation for a perceived intentional wreck the previous week.

I turned off the television and went to my computer. What did I do at my computer? When I was not working on this post, I was cleaning up my email backlog and sitting through three webinars. What did I find in my email newsletters? 1) A report on scholarly authors attempting to “game” the JIF (Journal Impact Factor) by self-citing their own articles, or by bartering citations from friends and colleagues by citing their articles in a pyrimad-type scheme called citation stacking; 2) A report on a scientist who pleaded guilty to fraud for faking data involving a study of HIV vaccine; 3) A report on a recently published article entitled “The Mirage of Prestige: The educational quality of courses in prestigious and non-prestigious institutions” that attempts to measure the difference in academic outcomes between the so-called prestigious and non-prestigious institutions; 4) Reports on several institutions faking data on campus crime statistics, salary information on graduates and admissions profile data; and 5) A report that estimates the costs of complying with federally imposed regulations across the higher education sector to be $27 billion annually.

What did I hear in the webinars?: 1) The first webinar dealt with plagiarism. The primary assumption was that faculty increasingly believe that students do not know what plagiarism is. However, even in the face of that previous assumption, faculty increasingly believe the frequency of plagiarism is increasing and more students are intentionally participating in it; 2) The second webinar was a presentation from the field of professional training. The primary point of this webinar was that compliance training is one of the most difficult areas of professional development in which to produce quality eLearning programs, while at the same time, it is one of the areas of fastest growing demand. In this webinar one question was continually raised: “Should we train people to act ethically or just to meet compliance requirements?” No matter how we answer the previous question, the webinar suggested that the CEO must lead the organization by exhibiting a constant pattern of ethical behavior, because the organization will rise to a level no higher than the one set by its leader. 3) The third webinar focused on the teaching of ethics. One of the foundational assumptions of the webinar presenters was that ethics was only a matter of content knowledge that could and should be taught within the confines of an academic discipline. The presenters kept saying that within a given context, there were rules, regulations and obligations that had to be met. The presenters dismissed any comment or suggestion that there were universal principles that applied across disciplines. Ethics were situational and behaviorally oriented.

I return to my original question, “what is the difference between ethics and ethical behavior?” I admit that I come down on the side of the universalists on this question. I believe that there are universal rules of right and wrong. In this sense one’s ethical behavior is a result of one living ethically. It becomes a matter of living by principles, not according to specific rules that can change when circumstances change. For students and faculty, honesty requires telling the truth, not lying, not stealing or not cheating, no matter the personal consequence, no matter whether every one else is doing it, or whether you can get away without getting caught. Living the principled life means doing the same thing whether someone is watching you or not. The second great commandment “Love your neighbor” is a principle, not a rule dependent upon whether the individual in need is “like you” or is “very different.” The great requirement from Micah 6:8, “what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (KJV) presents us another set of principles. Ethics and ethical behavior are not only matters of content, but of values. They are matters of the head and the heart. They require not only comprehension and accession, but also action by the individual based on the individual’s knowledge and beliefs.

Ethics and ethical behavior are not the same thing. However, ethical behavior should be the outgrowth of ethics. One should act based on one’s principles. How do we discover our principles (ethics) and translate those into actions (ethical behavior)? Two suggestions from Scripture provide us guidance in this endeavor. The first is Paul’s admonition to Timothy: “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (II Timothy 3: 14-17, KJV) The second is Solomon’s advice to his son: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Proverbs 3: 5&6, KJV)

If we diligently seek God’s principles, He will show them to us and guide us in the way we should go. We can follow in His footsteps on the path to righteousness and salvation.

My next post continues this discussion by raising the suggestion that the CEO of an organization should be its Chief Ethics Officer and Chief Encouragement Officer in addition to being its Chief Executive Officer.

April 5, 2012 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Never Take a Loved One for Granted

Within the past month, I learned several lessons from my 14-year old granddaughter. She shared with me an essay that she had written for her ninth-grade English class. The assignment was to write a memoir. I will admit that it brought tears to my eyes. Her essay showed the importance of family and the role that love and respect within a family should play. It emphasized the fact that the little things we do can make a big difference.

This may be the biased opinion of a grandfather who believes his granddaughter is one very special young lady, but I am convinced her essay exhibited a maturity far beyond what most of us exhibit, no matter what our age is. It also illustrated lessons that I have attempted to teach within the academy for 40 years that far too often have fallen on deaf ears.

With the permission of my granddaughter and her teacher (since it was an assignment), I take this opportunity to share the Memoir here at By’s Musings. I first present the essay and then will make some comments about it, speaking as a very proud grandfather.

Taken for Granted

Most people think that nothing will happen to them or the ones they love. I learned the hard way that it can. It was back in 6^th grade when I was eleven years old. I was a very outgoing person and I took my grandfather for granted, because I thought that he was always going to be around. He has always been a great grandfather and he was always the first person I would call when I would hit a homerun at softball or if I made a new team. I would only get to see him three or four times a year when my grandparents would come to Pennsylvania from Michigan. Though our visits were infrequent, we always had a great time when they came in.

I remember answering the phone and the person said that they were my grandmother’s pastor and that they were looking for my mom. I was so confused and had no idea what they were talking about. I walked into the kitchen and said “Mom, Grammy’s pasture [sic] is on the phone.” When I was eleven years old I did not know that a preacher was also called a pastor. My mom just stopped and looked at me like I was stupid and took the phone. I went upstairs to get in the shower, and when I came back down she was crying her eyes out. I asked her what was wrong, and the only thing she told me was that my grandfather was in the hospital. My mom called her sister, and she said that they think that he had a stroke. Right after she got off the phone she called my dad, and he came home right away. My mom wanted to go out to Michigan right away, but there were a couple of problems. PSSA testing had just started for me that day and we did not know how long we would be staying in MI. My mom and dad both had to work, we had nowhere to put my dog, and Michigan is over 13 hours away.

Missing work and school were the least of our problems. We decided that my dog would go to a friend’s house. We got everything packed up, dropped the dog off, and picked up my aunt. Then, the longest car ride to Butterworth Hospital out in Grand Rapids, Michigan began.

I remember walking in and I just started to cry. I walked over to his bed side and said, “Hey Pop-pop what’s up?” and I can remember his exact words “The sky.” At that point everyone started to laugh. My grandmother explained to us that he was in a meeting at work, after the meeting he put his head down on the table and one of his co-workers asked him if he was okay and he never answered. They immediately called 911, and when they got there they thought he had a bleeding stroke. We went to my grandparents’ home and one of my grandmother’s friends made us a casserole for dinner and left it on her door stoop.

The next day at the hospital they did a CAT scan and found out that he had a brain tumor the size of a racquet ball, and it caused some hemorrhaging. They wanted to do surgery immediately the next day. My grandfather had hair, but he was bald on top of his head. They shaved all of his hair off and he looked totally different. The day he had his surgery was the longest day ever. My family and I sat in the waiting room playing Apples to Apples, sleeping, and reading to past the time till my grandfather got out of surgery. We played Apples to Apples, because I had it in the car for from the long car ride.

When he finally came out of surgery and we could go back and see him, he had gauze wrapped around his head. He had staples in his head and when I saw him I almost got sick. We stayed for a couple more days, but we had to leave and get back home. I did not want to leave. I was afraid that he was not got going to pull through it.

My grandfather has never fully recovered from this whole incident. As a result of the surgery he has aphasia which is a condition that causes him to forget words that people take for granted in our everyday life. He cannot walk without a cane or for long periods of time. Since the whole incident he has also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which causes him to shake a lot. My grandfather before the brain tumor was a very self-sufficient person, but now he must rely on my grandmother to do most things for him. My grandfather was very upset after he found out that he is not allowed to drive any more or return to work.

This affected my family as well. When we got home every time the phone would ring we would be scared that something happened to him. It really affected my grandmother as well, because she cannot do everything by herself so they will move back to Pennsylvania in April of this year. Anything can happen to the people that you love, so make sure that they know that you love them and never take them for granted.

. The important lesson that we must all remember is the last sentence of her memoir. “Anything can happen to the people that you love, so make sure that they know that you love them and never take them for granted.” I don’t think that she is being morbid in suggesting that whenever we see a loved one, it may be the last time we will see them. I believe that she is teaching us to make sure that we show our love to each other whenever we can, because we don’t know when that opportunity will be taken from us.

The lesson noted in the opening paragraphs of this posting I suggested fell on deaf ears in the academy is that everyone regardless of their age or status has something to offer. I believe that knowledge consists of content, skills and values. No one person has a monopoly on knowledge. If even one member of a class is prevented from offering their insights to the whole class concerning thoughts related to the subject of the class, everyone, including instructor and students, is short-changed. A complete education is facilitated by an open class in which everyone participates as both instructor and student. The role of the professor is not to serve as dictator, but to serve as a facilitator and guide.

December 1, 2011 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Skeletons in the Closet–The Academy as a Metaphor

I began this series of postings with the intent of following the historical development of liberal education and colleges. The first posting focused on the ancient Greeks and a difference of understanding among some of the leading ancient Greek philosophers as to what constituted liberal education and for whom it was designed.

In that first posting I indicated that I would continue the series by looking at the development of liberal arts through the early Roman civilization, the medieval times and the European Renaissance. However, I have found that I must take several small detours.

There are several reasons I have decided on these detours. The first reason is that as I have become more accustomed to my metaphoric world I have discovered how deeply our language is built on metaphors. In my exploration of metaphors, I came across a real eye opener of an information source in James Geary’s book, “I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World.” Geary is a journalist and also New York Times Bestselling author of “The World in a Phrase.”

In preparation for his books, Geary did extensive study of language and the way we use it. As a result of that study, he concludes that metaphors are as old as language itself. As I have studied learning theory, I believe we must conclude that we learn by comparing and linking the unknown and new with the known and old. Therefore, metaphor was a way of thought long before it was a way with words.

As one of his major sources of information and examples in “I is an Other,” Geary relied on the archaeologist and expert on ancient languages, A. H. Sayce. Sayce estimated that three-fourths of our language consists of metaphors; some of which are active, while many are worn-out or whose origins are buried. The worn out metaphors could also be labeled as dormant. I was very skeptical of Sayce’s estimate of the extent of metaphors until I looked at the examples Sayce and Geary presented. I began to see how almost everything I said was based on a metaphor, long before I took up residence in a metaphoric world.

I should not have been surprised that three-quarters of our words have a metaphor somewhere in their history. Learning theory tells us that we learn by tying something new and unknown to something old and known. A metaphor attempts to help us understand one thing or concept by comparing it to something we already know. Thus we build new concepts and words via a metaphoric process.

If three-quarters of our words are based on metaphors, what are the implications for our understanding of liberal arts colleges? Thus, my first detour will be to investigate the metaphors upon which liberal arts education is built. In my investigation, I found that all of the followings words are built on metaphors: liberal, arts, sciences, literal, truth, academic, scholastic, education, knowledge, idea, conceives, and college. In my next posting, I will look at the metaphoric foundations of these terms.

As I previously indicated, I thought following the development of liberal arts and liberal arts colleges through history would be a straight path. However, as I looked at the history of liberal arts throughout history, I found it more resembled a cow path meandering through a pasture, among Western and non-Western civilizations. Living next to farms for many years, the only two times I ever saw a cow walk in a straight line were: 1) when it was feeding time and new food had just been dumped into the feed trough; and 2) when cows were entering the barn at milking time and they headed straight for their assigned milking stations.

If the history of liberal arts does not flow in a straight line, to more fully understand liberal arts and liberal arts colleges and follow their development, I have decided that I needed to meander through history and non-Western civilizations with them. Some of my upcoming postings will feature those meanderings. As with most detours, I believe that we will eventually end up at the desired location.