Thanks,
Harbans Lal Gera

Keep up the good work!

P.S. I didn’t knew where to write it so i wrote here, i hope this is not a problem.

You wrote: “And there are many ways of blogging: not everyone has to write essays – there is a place for link blogs, preferably with some comments by the blogger.”

As you know, I tend to write longer pieces. That’s my style. But each morning, usually early, I spend 30 minutes touring my blog shortlist, clicking through on links to check. The blogosphere is a huge information screening device, with the link blogs being especially useful.

You also wrote: “A further consideration is the offline conversationof bloggers, the emails and IMs that zip around the globe between bloggers every day, not making it as blog posts, but informing and nuancing the conversation. You don’t get to be included in that part of the conversation unless and until you start blogging”

Absolutely spot on. And I think that this has been the biggest surprise for me since I started blogging. It’s actually a lot more than just nuancing the conversation, it’s real friendship and information exchange.

Maybe it’s not a should, but I would strongly recommend it. My experience in discussing what comes up in the blogosphere is that I have a qualitatively different conversation with other bloggers than I do with people who ‘know about’ blogging, or even read blog posts occasionally. Maybe not unlike the conversations musos have with one another, sportspeople etc. And there are many ways of blogging: not everyone has to write essays – there is a place for link blogs, preferably with some comments by the blogger.

A further consideration is the offline conversationof bloggers, the emails and IMs that zip around the globe between bloggers every day, not making it as blog posts, but informing and nuancing the conversation. You don’t get to be included in that part of the conversation unless and until you start blogging.

The internet world is information rich, although I have argued that this is patchy. So there is a case that people should be trained how to access this. The internet world allows for new ways of cooperative working and teaching. Again a case for training.

But does the internet world really affect the philosophy and core methodolgy of disciplines? I don’t think that it does in any way. My core complaint with much education is that it has a focus on process (how to do) as compared to what should be done and why.

To try to illustrate. When I started history at UNE we did a lot in first year on things like evidence, primary sources, documenting references.

This is nuts and bolts stuff, things that you had to know. Quite a bit of it is now added to the secondary curriculum. You took this and learned the analytical processes through doing.

The philosp0hy and methodology courses in honours years were then, at least so far as the subjects I knew, very different.

If you take Dad’s history of economic thought course it was all about concepts, assumptions and values. Starting with Hesiod’s Works and Days, he traced through key economic concepts such as profit showing when it emerged and how it changed over time.

Ted Tapp’s philosopy of history course – still the university course I value most highly – looked at concepts such as causation, putting them in a broader context. The course was as much about philosophy as history.

In both cases, you had to already have a sufficient grounding in the discipline to make sense of it all.

Don’t know enough about current course structures to comment beyond this.