Baren Digest             Saturday, 10 November 2001     Volume 17 : Number 1613


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From: "Bill H Ritchie Jr" <ritchie@seanet.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 06:44:41 -0800
Subject: [Baren 16127] Re: Baren Digest V17 #1611 

The topic of EDUCATION may have to move itself to other areas than Baren, as
it is
not specifically baren-related, nor limited to woodcut printmaking.

I am an educator, but I never hang out on education sites (well, there is
one called
HEN which stands for Holistic Education Network).

The reason I pin hopes on artists who are making prints by hand is because
I'm one of those that gerentologists call "homesteaders"--people who stay on
a set pathway their whole lives long.

There are other names for people like us, but not as kind. Anyway, I figure
education can be addictive, and most human beings practice it their whole
life, although not always with the intention we might wish for.

When Marilynn, having wisely observed that home-schooling in some form is
life-saving, she also wrote (asked)


>I have often wondered why our culture expects all learning to be done at

school and

My opinion is that there was a fork in the road right after the Civil War,
and the experts divided into two armies, as it were. One marched to the tune
of industry and commerce and saw the need for some kind of paid slavery.
Their schools fought for a leadership position and won. This gave rise to
the dominant mentality I call "transfer and bottle".

A long story short, it means you can't learn art outside of art school. And
you can't get information, demonstrations, exhibitions, etc. without getting
in your car, or buying an airline ticket somewhere.

In other words, to "get art" you have to first get those little machine made
intaglio prints, printed both sides on fine paper we call money . . . or
embossed plastic with holograms.

You have to consume, in other words, because that army's mantra is economics
that ensures their longevity (even though they are all dead now).

The question is, what happened to the other army?

My search was satisfied when I discovered several whose books survived. My
research is not complete, but I think Ralph Waldo Emerson might have been
one of the leaders, and an almost totally forgotten scientist named Elmer
Gates.


> where the ability to pass down knowledge from genertion to generation has

gone to?

I don't think it's gone completely, and Marilynn's story gives me reason to
think it has not gone. Trouble is, it is rare. Too rare. And rarity breeds
what I call the "scarcity mentality"--the very thing that the other army
counted on scaring people into the shelter of "transfer and bottle."

For example, one of my co-workers in the University of Washington used to
tell me, in self-praise, that the joy of teaching for him was "in giving
students their individuality."

For political reasons I never asked him, "Who was it took students
individuality that you had to give it to them?"

But secretly I compared it to white invaders giving natives their land.

So my answer to Marilynn in the ability of "passing down (across?)" of
knowledge was transferred to others who merely were bottlers, experts at
bottling up knowledge ostensibly so it could be accessed freely, but it was
a lie.

In Roman times they were roughly equivalent to librarians, and held an
honorable place in the empire. They went with leaders in major parades,
almost abreast of the leading military people. They carried a bundle of
sticks with an axe-head sticking out, symbolic of the scrolls that contained
knowledge. These bundles were called FASCES, I think, and it's where the
word fascisti, or fascists, came from.

It's on one of the United States coin, the dime. Check it out.

Thanks, Marilynn. But having caused me to want to answer, and taking too
long, I may get sent away from the Baren List.

Oh well. It was fun . . .

Bill H. Ritchie, Jr
500 Aloha #105
Seattle WA 98109
(206) 285-0658
Professional: www.seanet.com/~ritchie
Virtual Gallery and E-Store: www.myartpatron.com
First Game Portal: www.artsport.com


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End of Baren Digest V17 #1613
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