Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA12145 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 8 Dec 2000 16:24:58 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745B80@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: beliefs via education or vice versa Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 16:22:46 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> On 12/08/00 08:21, Vincent Campbell said this-
<This may be all education was and is for a grand percentage of the
human
> race.>
>
True, true, alas all too true. Education should be about
challenging beliefs not indoctrination.
The problem is, does it really work in that way?
This is the same point I have about advertising. People always wheel
out that 'they wouldn't spend so much on advertisting if it didn't work'
argument when trying to prove media violence effects. Did seeing the wassap
ad make you go and buy a bottle of Bud after seeing it?
Does anyone on the list remember believing everything (or even
anything) their teachers told them?
As much as I sympathise with the concerns expressed about the
mis-use of education (or the media for that matter) I just don't think those
concerns relate as much as people think to the world out there.
<One's method of learning may have arrived despite education, there
and
> then, or here and now.>
>
I wouldn't argue with that.
<How many committees in _your_ educational infrastructure...?>
I don't really know how to answer that. There are committees,
including those which students sit on to give us feedback. The courses I
teach, in my role as a teaching fellow, are essentially determined by
departmental needs (so I don't have the freedom to run a course on
memetics... yet). But, the actual contents of my courses are entirely mine
to do with as I will. For example, I teach a unit on political
communication for MSc PR students. Apart from trying to give the material a
bit of a PR focus, so it's relevant to students' concerns, I can do what I
like. More importantly, perhaps, I don't have to sing from a hymn sheet
about 'correct' ways of thinking/reading/seeing the subject area. That's
not my job. Besides they wouldn't (or shouldn't) listen to me even if it
was.
>>People come to believe things because we're perceptually imperfect
<This is such an important point that IMHO it cannot be stressed
enough.
> Hardly secondary to this, people can be _led_ to believe things because
> we are perceptually imperfect as well, and that cannot be stressed
> enough. >
>
perhaps.
<Connecting one's perception to the way things are is the holiness
> of science, and the unholiness of religious belief systems.>
>
agreed.
Vincent
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