Redlining our Education

I liked the Austin Baughan's post about the challenges facing groundbreaking scientists, especially the quote he included from The Great Influenza:


"All real scientists exist on the frontier. Even the least ambitious among them deal with the unknown, if only one step beyond the known. The best among them move deep into a wilderness region where they know almost nothing, where the very tools and techniques needed to clear the wilderness, to bring order to it, do not exist. There they probe in a disciplined way. There a single step can take them through the looking glass into a world that seems entirely different, and if they are at least partly correct their probing acts like a crystal to precipitate an order out of chaos, to create form, structure, and direction. A single step can also take one off a cliff."


Ariel described those efforts as a sort of flailing,and I think that's sort of accurate. Deliberate flailing, maybe. And as I experiment with the themes of our Digital Civilization class I feel like I can relate to a scientist trying to settle a frontier.This new learning style requires a real change in my habits. It's exciting, partly because it feels so risky.

Risk. It's not just one of the best board games ever, it's one of the spices of life. When I learned what a hands-off approach Prof. Burton and Prof. Zappala were taking with the class my initial reaction was, "lucky them, they get to sit back and take it easy!" Then almost immediately I corrected myself. I realized that it must take a lot of discipline to allow so much freedom in a system, to give up a degree of control without giving up the final responsibility for the outcome of the system (it's their class, so they cannot escape some degree of responsibility, either for our failures or our successes.) 

The idea of conceptualizing and carrying out a final class project during the course of the semester has the potential to be a great success or a spectacular failure. I think it will be a success. I'm determined to make it so and I think that most of the class is on board with that idea also. But there is a risk. We could fail. And that's partly what makes it fun.

Because even if we fail we can "fail with glory." We can go down in a noble attempt to practice what we preach and we'll have gained valuable knowledge and experience. We'll get 'em next time. Some have said you can only live once you aren't afraid to die.

I don't say this to cast a shadow of gloom or doubt on our final project efforts. Actually, I hope it will accomplish the opposite, I hope this idea will embolden us.