Whether Division of Knowledge into Disciplines and Division of the World into Countries on a Map Artificial - Assignment Example

If someone claims that both the division of knowledge into disciplines and the division of the world into countries on a map are artificial, what does this mean? A discipline of knowledge is a field of inquiry about some aspect of the world - the physical world, the flow of events over time, numeric structures, and so on. A discipline of knowledge gives a way of insight into the world. This particular way of looking at the world and all that is a part of it, comes from the focused set of skills and practices that a particular discipline of knowledge has provided. People belonging to various discipline of knowledge have their own interpretations of the same phenomenon. Besides this, the divisions of knowledge also helps make a sense of community for the individuals belonging to a certain special interest, as those people would like to extend their knowledge of the same discipline by interacting with the similar knowledgeable people. Those on the front edges of a discipline know that disciplinary boundaries are fluid and often connect with other disciplines to create interdisciplinary fields and projects. (Klein, 1990) Though school-based subject areas, like disciplines of knowledge, partition knowledge into differentiated categories, they are not the same thing as disciplines. Some subjects, like history or mathematics, come close, but they are really institutionally based representations of disciplines, since they deal with a limited selection of what is already known within the field. That selection is based on what someone believes ought to be known (or is not worth knowing) about some discipline by people who do not work within it or are unfamiliar with its progress to date. Other subjects, like biology or algebra or home economics, are subsets of disciplines and are limited in even more specialized ways. And still other subjects, like career education or foreign languages, may lay far-reaching claims of connection to some discipline, but their presence in schools really has to do with economic, social, or academic aspirations. In this sense, a discipline of knowledge and its representative school subject area are not the same things, even though they may be concerned with similar bodies of knowledge. They serve quite different purposes, offer quite different experiences for those who encounter them, and have quite different notions about the fluidity of the boundaries that presumably set one area of inquiry off from others. These differences are substantial enough that the identification of a school subject area as, for example, "history" amounts to an appropriation of the name attached to its corresponding discipline of knowledge. Subject areas are, in the end, a more severe case of "hardening of the categories" than are the disciplines they supposedly represent. Any careful reading of the activities should reveal that, if they are done thoughtfully, they will draw heavily on a variety of disciplines of knowledge for facts, skills, concepts, and understandings. For example, in constructing surveys, tabulating data, and preparing reports, one would need to draw heavily from the social sciences, language arts, and mathematics. Suppose that some young people did not know how to compute percentages or make graphs. “Curriculum integration centers the curriculum on life itself rather than on the mastery of fragmented information within the boundaries of subject areas. It is rooted in a view of learning as the continuous integration of new knowledge and experience so as to deepen and broaden our understanding of ourselves and our world.” (www.umm.maine.edu:300/Education/ students/CurriculumDesign/Hinerman.htm) Its focus is on life as it is lived now rather than on preparation for some later life or later level of schooling. It serves the young people for whom the curriculum is intended rather than the specialized interests of adults. It concerns the active construction of meanings rather than the passive assimilation of others' meanings. Described in this way, curriculum integration is more of a real paradigm shift than are the changes usually touted as such. Yet it does not reject outright or abandon all that has been deemed important by other views of schooling. This accommodation is especially apparent with regard to the disciplines of knowledge, which are necessarily drawn on in responsible curriculum integration. This point is not a matter of compromise but of common sense. Advocates of curriculum integration may criticize the separate-subject approach and the purpose of schooling it implies, they may accuse subject-area loyalists of narcissism, and they may decry the deadening effects of the separate-subject curriculum. But they do not intend to walk away from knowledge - and, for that reason, the disciplines of knowledge are clearly not the enemies of curriculum integration. “THE dream of intellectual unity was a product of the Enlightenment, an Icarian flight of the mind that spanned the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A vision of secular knowledge in the service of human rights and human progress, it was the West's greatest contribution to civilization. It launched the modern era for the whole world; we are all its legatees. Then--astonishingly--it failed.” (Wilson, 1998) Creating a curriculum for and with young people begins with an examination of the problems, issues, and concerns of life as it is being lived in a real world. Organizing themes are drawn from that examination. To work through such themes, to broaden and deepen our understanding of ourselves and our world, and to communicate those meanings, we must necessarily draw on the disciplines of knowledge. Again, therein lies much of what we know about ourselves and our world, ways in which we might explore them further, and possibilities for communicating meanings. Our reach for help in this kind of curriculum is a purposeful and directed activity - we do not simply identify questions and concerns and then sit around and wait for enlightenment to come to us. Instead, we intentionally and contextually "put knowledge to work." More and more educators are coming to realize that there is a fundamental tension in schools that current restructuring proposals are simply not addressing, no matter how radical their rhetoric might otherwise be. That tension has to do with the curriculum that mediates the relationships between teachers and young people. After all, teachers and their students do not come together on a random or voluntary social basis - they do not meet casually and decide to "do school." Instead, they are brought together to do something - namely the curriculum - and if that curriculum is fraught with fundamental problems, then the relationships between teachers and students will almost certainly be strained. The main points against the division of knowledge into disciplines include: First, the separate-subject approach, as a selective representation of disciplines of knowledge, has incorrectly portrayed the latter as "ends" rather than "means" of education. Young people and adults have been led to believe that the purpose of education is to master or "collect facts, principles, and skills that have been selected for inclusion in one or another subject area instead of learning how those isolated elements might be used to inform larger, real-life purposes. Second, the separate subjects and the disciplines of knowledge they are meant to represent are territories carved out by academicians for their own interests and purposes. Imposed on schools, the subject approach thus suggests that the "good life" consists of intellectual activity within narrowly defined areas." The notion that this is the only version of a "good life," or the best one, or even a widely desirable one demeans the lives of others outside the academy that have quite different views and aspirations. It is a remnant of the same "top-down" version of the curriculum that has historically served the people in schools so poorly. The division of knowledge into disciplines when taught to the young people as in a separate-subject-approach provides a detached and jumbled assortment of facts and skills. Such a jumbled knowledge makes no real sense at all. It happens so much in real life that one stops to ask one if this particular problem belongs to mathematics or science, or which part belongs to which discipline of knowledge. The separate-subject approach is a legacy of Western-style classical humanism, which views the world in divided compartments. This view was shored up in the last century by the theories of faculty psychology and mental discipline that described the mind as a compartmentalized "muscle" whose parts were to be exercised separately by particular disciplines. The reasoning faculty, for example, was supposedly exercised by the "objective logic" of mathematics, and the assumption was that the heightened reasoning abilities could then be applied to any new situations, including social ones. Though faculty psychology and mental discipline were discredited by the turn of the century, both live on in some interpretations of split-brain and multiple intelligence theories. And suspect as it has now become, classical humanism still looms large in curriculum organization as part of "official knowledge." “A balanced perspective cannot be acquired by studying disciplines in pieces; the consilience among them must be pursued. Such unification will be difficult to achieve. But I think it is inevitable. Intellectually it rings true, and it gratifies impulses that arise from the admirable side of human nature. To the extent that the gaps between the great branches of learning can be narrowed, diversity and depth of knowledge will increase. They will do so because of, not despite, the underlying cohesion achieved. The enterprise is important for yet another reason: It gives purpose to intellect. It promises that order, not chaos, lies beyond the horizon. Inevitably, I think, we will accept the adventure, go there, and find what we need to know.” (Paul et al., 1998) As for the divisions of countries of the world on the map, then that is gradually coming to an end. The trend of globalization is taking reign and all countries of the world are converging to one point. Not even one country is oblivious of the other present on the map of the world. Be it politics, financial and capital markets, overall economy, culture or academics, no one country lives without having influence of the other. However, region wise speaking, the countries falling into the one region are more influenced in one way or the other by the countries in the same region. The WTO and the agreements and pacts falling under the domain of WTO are even eradicating the thin lines dividing the countries on the map of the world. Free flow of trade is not limited to goods and services only, the free flow of knowledge must also be encouraged through out the world. All the countries must have equal rights to all disciplines of knowledge. The debate will take a turn away from the topic under consideration and may go ahead to challenge the existence of patents on the technologies because these limit the usage and expansion of knowledge from spreading into the hands of other countries. The supposition that human knowledge cannot sufficiently commend and enforce its own ontological implicates must lead to the inquiry as to what these implicates are, and as to the terms on which they are given to the intellect for its acceptance or rejection. When skepticism and agnosticism challenge our cognition to recognize its limits, it is time to send the challenge back, and to inquire what the necessary boundaries between areas of knowledge are. There exists the relativity in all areas of knowledge as discussed in detail in this paper. And, finally, the very doctrine of the ‘relativity of all knowledge’ irresistibly brings on the inquiry whether this term, too, does not also imply the absolute nature of some human knowledge. Bibliography Julie Thompson Klein, (1990) “lnterdisciplinarity: History Theory, and Practice” Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Paul R. Gross, Richard Rorty, Edward O. Wilson (1998) “Is Everything Relative?: A Debate on the Unity of Knowledge” The Wilson Quarterly. Volume: 22. Issue: 1. Publication Date: Winter 1998. Page Number: 14+. Edward O. Wilson (1998) “Back from Chaos: ... We Will Discover Underlying All Forms of Knowledge a Fundamental Unity” The Atlantic Monthly. Volume: 281. Issue: 3. Publication Date: March 1998. Page Number: v41-446. How to Develop an Effective Middle http://www.umm.maine.edu:300/Education/students/CurriculumDesign/Hinerman.htm Accessed May 25, 2006 Read More