Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 03:32:53 -0500 (EST)
Random Thought: When Knowledge Is Ignorance
Good morning. It's 3:00 a.m. and I am wide awake. Try as I may,
my eyelids refuse to get heavy. So, here I am at the computer desperate
for a visit from Morpheus, when a phrase once again popped into my head.
It has been bouncing around in the back of my mind for the past few weeks.
It was put on the table by a professor at a flagship university during an
extended discussion about the Boyer report on reconsidering the
relationship and status of scholarship and teaching. "I will never be
convinced....." she finally said with defiant certitude, and the exchange
was suddenly ended. Such an uncreative, unimaginative, inflexible,
stagnating, close-minded proclamation from such a knowledgeable person.
And, over the past few weeks I intermittently and slowly thought
of the unspeakable. There are times and instances when knowledge is ignorance.
Knowledge is ignorance? How can that be? They're not synonomous
terms. Ham 'n eggs partners they ain't. Knowledge is beautiful and
therapeutical; ignorance pimply and ugly and is pathological. Knowledge,
we are told, is an essential serum for the eradication of ignorance, not
it's carrier. They are contradictory; they are antithetical. They are not
allies. They, the forces of light and dark, of progress and stagnation,
are uncompromising foes engaged in mental, intellectual and spiritual
battles of biblical proportions. They cannot be the same.
Ah, but they can walk hand in hand indistinguishable from each
other as if they were identifcal twins dressed alike. Let me tell you
how I think that is possible.
If knowledge is only a narrow spotlight rather than a broad
floodlight, if it is a set of blinders that tunnels our vision and blots
out the broad horizon, if we teach or are taught only answers rather than
to question the answers, if we teach or are taught to see one way, one
approach, one technique--the way we do it now--if we teach or are taught
not to see other ways or the possibility of other ways or to encourage
experimentation with other ways, then, knowledge is pathological; it is
blinding, deafening, paralyzing ignorance.
I'm going to give the pillow one more shot. Otherwise, I'm going
to be a zombie. Got an 8:00 a.m. class coming up for starters. Good
night--I hope.