It's Just Wrong!

I've spent a lot of time studying Greek today, so I decided I would reward myself by listening to the Berkeley class on Archaeology (Anthropology 2AC from Spring 2008). However, I went to webcast.berkeley in vain; the class is no longer there. In fact, a huge number of classes are no longer there.


Distressed, I looked for an explanation on Berkeley's website. I found a letter to the large group of perturbed self-education fans. The general gist is that the Real Player server has been retired, and all those courses with it. The team has been unable to find what they believe is an adequate conversion format for the files and seem to be hoping for donations in order to increase the possibility that they might find something. They claim that they might obtain a temporary stint on another server, but they give not hint as to when this might be: "We have requested additional temporary storage space on a new server, when this space comes online we will restore the Real Player files and make them available for the public to download for a limited period of time (Contingent upon instructor approval)." I do not have much faith in this limited period of time because they provided no warning whatsoever about the websites renovation.


I find this whole move quite saddening. Berkeley's webcasts are on of the great ways for people to educate themselves for free, and they are cutting off access to those who would seek out that education. I am posting this same note on Platonic Psychology because I believe it's an important problem.

Manuscripts, Movies, and Thoughts

Today I went to see the "Imagining the Past in France Exhibit" (see Platonic Psychology) and a companion lecture: "Manuscripts and Movies: From the Medieval to the Modern." The premise of the lecture was that although technology was different in the two media, movies, like manuscripts, are a visual means for artists to reshape the past based on contemporary events and tell a specific story. Through about five examples, Elizabeth Morrison and Kenneth Turan explored the different ways of representing and illustrating the past.

The lecture was fun and interesting, although not art history focused like the other companion lecture for this exhibit. I am especially curious about the version of Richard III from which they showed clips. They used it to illustrate that updating the a concept made foreign by its antiquity, just as the manuscript artists did by putting classical figures in medieval dress, artists and filmmakers can demonstrate the universality of human themes.

Note: My sourdough starters are back to being happy again (the weather here did not initially agree with them) so it may be time to make some more sourdough bread...

Wine Snob: Expanding My Palate (Soon)

I had one of those days where I woke up in the morning (later than I had intended), realized that I had forgotten about all of the Horace I was supposed to read, knew I could not finish it in time, and just decided to relax for a little while and worry about life later. Unfortunately, that means that I ended up shirking my obligations with both Propertius II and Cerinthus and I feel like a complete loser (sorry guys!).

Since I am still working on my work on dramatic vs. compositional dating of Plato, see my recent blogposts, I spent most of the day looking out my window and re-reading Catherine Zuckert's chapter on the Laws. A good portion of the Laws, in my memory and in Zuckert's summery/analysis, focuses on moderation and specifically a debate between the Athenian and the Dorian views on wine. The Athenians traditionally drank a lot of wine at symposia and civic festivals like the Greater Dionysia. The Dorians, however, according to the Laws, are not allowed to be intoxicated in public. In the Laws, the Athenian Stranger proposes to only allow men over the age of 30 to drink in order to test their character. Overall, the Greek world seems to conceive of wine as an agent of forgetfulness and lowered inhibitions (i.e. to test a person's true character). Since that seems to be the theme of my day (and because we just got the wines for the holidays), I thought I might talk a little about wine.

I do not know much about wine, as I have mentioned before, but I like to learn. My mother found a wonderful site called Garagiste, which is run by a small importer in Seattle who sends wine when the customer has assembled an entire case. We sometimes assemble a single case (one or two bottles of interesting-sounding wines until we have collected  a case) and share the wines with friends at holiday gatherings. The set this year is entirely red wines, and most of them are "mystery wines." Since there has been a great glut of grapes over the past few years on the West Coast of the US, a number of wineries jumped at the chance to "undersell" their wines (i.e. selling them for much lower than the traditional/list price), packaged anonymously, without tarnishing the reputation of their label. I am looking forward to tasting the wine and reporting back on it at some point soon.

Speaking of wine, while I have been writing this, I decided to revisit one of the movies of my youth (I was raised on musicals of the Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire era), which also involves drinking a lot of wine. High Society is a musical version of Philadelphia Story, narrated by Louis Armstrong and featuring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra. I highly recommend it, if you have not seen it (although be aware, there is some seriously 1950s-style moralizing).

Unconventional Education #2

Two of the reasons that I was so interested in Sugata Mitra's [1] TED Talk in my last blogpost are that I am now working as an educator and that I am a product of progressive education (in my formative elementary school years). From this, I understand the power of working in groups and students teaching themselves and each other.

I went to a progressive elementary school that was built on John Dewey's conception of experimental learning. We spent most of our time in school working in groups, block building, and wood working. We went on field trips to the source of each of the sites that we were studying. I remember vividly sitting through mass at a modern monastery when studying the life of medieval monks and getting up at 3am to go to one of the groups of vendors that supplies restaurants in order to see how the city worked. I gained a curiosity and a passion for learning there.


I picked the college that I did partially on the idea that it would be a return to these unconventional roots. Although it had grades, classes, and majors, like any traditional institution, there was a high premium put on working in groups for certain classes as well as an encouragement for self-competition rather than interpersonal competition. This was a lovely change from my traditional high school, and it fostered precisely the intellectual environment that I craved. In my senior year, I started a Heidegger seminar which met on Friday nights to discuss Being and Time. This class utilized a combination of technology (sometimes listening to Hubert Dryfus' lectures from his Philosophy 185 class, as well as individual in the group finding things online), and group work (the discussions every week) allowed us to gain an incredible amount of information out of the text. Emergence, in Mitra's words. We had very little outside intervention, except for a few visits from a wonderful German professor. I unfortunately was not able to read and participate in this as much as possible due to writing my thesis, but the Heidegger group was productive and wonderful and it was one of the great parts of my education.

The SAT prep that I teach involves some amount of group work in each class. Although often times the group work devolves into talking. The students in my class are tense about school, sports, and college applications, and many of them go to school together. However, the other day I witnessed a great moment. Two of the girls in my class, who have the most trouble with math were working together. One of the smartest, but also one of the tougher girls in my class, ended up in a group with them. When I came over to check on the group, she was helping them-- really explaining carefully how each of the math problems worked and encouraging them. I did not even have to help them out and I was able to focus on some of the other groups that were having trouble focusing. It underlined, for me, the true value of working together.

In some ways, that this self-generated learning is what I am trying to do this year. I am attempting to channel my curiosity in a way to further my own education and solidify those things I learned in the past in my mind. I am not, unfortunately, in a group of any kind (although there is an advanced calculus class at a local school I would absolutely love to take), but I am using the internet, the books I have around, and material from my old courses in order to try to create my own education. Part of the reason I write Platonic Psychology is that I provide a collection of resources for anyone who is out there looking, but more to provide me with a hypothetical group with whom I can interact. By articulating my thoughts to these theoretical people, I solidify my thoughts and allow them to grow (and hopefully generate emergence). So hopefully it will all work out.

Endnotes

1. I just discovered his blog and found it to be thoroughly charming.