Intrinsic Value of Knowledge

[coberst]

Intrinsic Value of Knowledge

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

In a recent issue of the Telegraph appeared an article by Anthony O’Hear responding to an article by education minister Rammell. Mr. Rammell had said it is "not necessarily a bad thing" that there have been sharp falls in the number of students applying to study history and the classics at university.

I think it safe to say that had there been no Renaissance there would have been no Western civilization as we know it. Had there been no Western civilization you and I would live in an entirely different world. One, I suspect, far less appealing than this one.

Renaissance means rebirth; Renaissance was the rebirth of the Greek and Roman intellectual attitude. It was the recapturing of classical learning that was lost to the West during the period often referred to as the Dark Ages.

“It would be no exaggeration to say that European culture from the 14th century onwards has been defined by the way each age and each artistic movement has gone to the wells of ancient Greece and Rome, has drunk deep and has arisen refreshed and invigorated - every age, that is, until our own.”

“We are depriving our children of knowledge of all of this in our futile efforts to be modern and focused on the instrumental. We are forging a new dark age, in which the decline of the study of history is also to be welcomed.”

“Mr. Rammell would apparently have us rejoice in the fact that we have no sense of the past; but a person with no sense of the past is a person who is a stranger both to his or her own roots and to the human condition more generally. For human beings are not creatures of nature; we are inheritors of the history that has made us what we are. Not to know our history is not to know ourselves, and that is the condition not of human beings, but of animals.”

“And the history of Rome is the source of the history of Europe, and the cradle both of Christianity and of the notion of the rule of law.”

“Is it any wonder that, with no sense of our past or identity - as, in other moods, politicians increasingly complain - we are a culture obsessed with celebrity, football, and reality television? Most of our population knows nothing else, and they have no yardstick from either history or culture with which to judge. As long ago as the 1920s, the great (classicist) poet T S Eliot stared at what he saw as the collapse of European culture: "These fragments I have shored against my ruin." Most of us have no knowledge now even of the fragments. We, or our children, will have only a desolate sense of loss, but we won't know what it is we have lost. Welcome to Rammell's world.”

• Anthony O'Hear is professor of philosophy at Buckingham University. His book Plato's Children (2006) is published by Gibson Square Books

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main ... do1701.xml

[chonsigirl]

Yes, there is a decline in the study of history at universities. For some specialties they even go out and recruit students for specific fields of interest. I can remember being assigned U.S. Urbanization as a major field for my M.A., and I wasn't interested in it very much. I much prefered my other field, of ancient history. The next level up I was in an entirely different field, because they actually came and asked me to consider their program and field, of History of Native Americans. I am glad that I choose that area of study, which is always rewarding to study and write about.

I would have loved to have continued in the classics and/or ancirent history, but the universities here in the U.S. are also very select in who can attend the graduate level classes. If you do not begin your studies at a particular university, the chances are slim you can enter at the next level, even if you are very qualified in it. I was rejected from my first choice university, because I did not obtain my B.A. from them-I requested they test me in the ancient languages required, background knowledge, etc. It was refused, because I did not take their courses at the undergrad level.

Impediments such as these need to be corrected to keep college students interested in selecting these fields of interest. Also, the study of European ancient cultures is not emphasized in the middle and high school levels anymore. I teach 7th grade, and have the option of teaching them or not. I do, with a 2 month unit on ancient civilizations. The other 7th grade social studeis teacher does not, but concentrates on other world cultures.

[coberst]

Chonsi

My post focused primarily on learnng within a teaching environment but my real interest is on how little our population acquires and honors the learning of knowledge and creating an understanding of disinterested knowledge on the whole.

I certainly would like to see teachers of history carrying their expertise out to the population in general. An example would be a teacher like your self posting a rationale for adults developing a hobby of learning history.