As we are at mid-semester I thought it would be a nice time to think about Education, with a little help from Feng Zikai, Republican China’s best-known cartoonist.
Feng obviously did not think much of education in general
Education is the process of changing raw materials into something else
Lots of bits of Chinese prose would make great blog entries. (A blog is basically a biji, more or less) Plus, they make great things to teach from. So, if any of you are teaching about the Song dynasty elite and their attitudes towards the mundane world you might find this from our guest-blogger Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 to be helpful or informative. (tips on working with it here)
A Record of the Pavilion of an Intoxicated Old Man
Ou-yang Hsiu
All around Ch’u there are mountains, but the forests and valleys of that assemblage of peaks to the southwest are the finest. There is one that appears from afar most luxuriant and deepest in verdure—that is Lang-ya. After you have walked six or seven tricents into the mountains, there you will gradually notice the sound of water gurgling. Where it drains out between the two peaks, this is Brewer’s Spring. Rounding the peak the road winds; there a pavilion hangs, like a wing, out over the spring. This is the Intoxicated Old Man’s pavilion. Who was it that built this pavilion? A monk of these mountains, Chih-hsien. And who named it? The prefect, who called it after himself. When prefect and guests come to drink here, because he becomes intoxicated after only drinking a little and because he is the oldest in years, that is why he nicknamed himself the Intoxicated Old Man. But what he means by Intoxicated Old Man has nothing to do with the wine; it has to do instead with being in the mountains by the water. This joy from the mountains and the water he feels within his mind; he merely ascribes it to the wine.
Now the sun rises and the forest mists dissipate, the clouds return and the caves in ravines grow gloomy—these alternations of dusk and light mark mornings and evenings amid the mountains. Wild flowers bloom with their hidden scents, beautiful trees leaf out with deepening shade, then winds rise and pure frost appears, the water level drops and the rocks protrude—such are the four seasons amid the mountains. In the morning he goes there, in the evening he returns; the scenery of the four seasons is never the same, hence his joy knows no bounds.
Those who carry loads on their backs sing along the path; sojourners rest beneath the trees. The ones in front call out and those behind respond. Some are bent over with age and others so young that they must be led by the hand. They come and go without cease—such are the travelers around Ch’u. One may lean over this stream and fish; the stream being deep, the fish are fat. Or one may brew wine with the spring water; the spring being fragrant, the wine is crystal clear. Sliced meats from the mountains and wild vegetables arrayed in profusion before the guests—such are the prefect’s banquets. The joys of the feast are not from strings or winds; they are from winning at pitch-pot, from victory in chess. Passing goblets and mugs back and forth, shouting with abandon, now sitting,, now on their feet—such is the happy abandon of the guests. And the one who, ruddy-faced and white of hair, lies sprawled in their midst—that is the prefect intoxicated.
When the merriment is over and the evening sun sets among the mountains, the prefect goes home with his guests in tow, their shadows jumbled together. The forest gloom deepens; birds call high and low. The revelers all gone, the birds are joyful. Yet, though birds may know the joy of mountain forests, they know not the joy of mankind; men may know the joy of revels with the prefect and yet never know the prefect’s enjoyment of their joy.
Intoxicated yet able to share their joy, able when sober to describe it in writing—such is the prefect. And what is this prefect’s name? Ou-yang Hsiu of Lu-ling. Translated by Robert E. Hegel
醉翁亭记
环滁皆山也。其西南诸峰，林壑尤美。望之蔚然而深秀者，琅琊也。山行六七里， 渐闻水声潺潺，而泄出于两峰之间者，酿泉也。峰回路转，有亭翼然临于泉上者， 醉翁亭也。作亭者谁？山之僧智仙也。名之者谁？太守自谓也。太守与客来饮于 此，饮少辄醉，而年又最高，故自号曰“醉翁”也。醉翁之意不在酒，在乎山水之间 也。山水之乐，得之心而寓之酒也。若夫日出而林霏开，云归而岩穴暝，晦明变化 者，山间之朝暮也。野芳发而幽香，佳木秀而繁阴，风霜高洁，水落而石出者，山 间之四时也。朝而往，暮而归，四时之景不同，而乐亦无穷也。至于负者歌于塗， 行者休于树，前者呼，后者应，伛偻提携，往来而不绝者，滁人游也。临溪而渔， 溪深而鱼肥；酿泉为酒，泉香而酒冽；山肴野蔌，杂然而前陈者，太守宴也。宴酣 之乐，非丝非竹，射者中，弈者胜，觥筹交错，坐起而喧哗者，众宾欢也。苍然白 发，颓乎其中者，太守醉也。已而夕阳在山，人影散乱，太守归而宾客从也。树林 阴翳，鸣声上下，游人去而禽鸟乐也。然而禽鸟知山林之乐，而不知人之乐；人知 从太守游而乐，而不知太守之乐其乐也。醉能同其乐，醒能述其文者，太守也。太 守谓谁？庐陵欧阳修也
For more discussion see
Another in our long series of teaching aids
from Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin via Brad DeLong
As I am half-heartedly getting ready for the Spring I am putting together some readings for my students. What survey would be complete without a chunk from the Secret History of the Mongols? So if you are looking to take a break from your preparations for Taiwan’s Constitution Day this is a good way to take a break. I would like to claim that I have carefully studied the whole text and picked out the best bit to give you a picture of Mongol society, but that’s not really true. It is a good read though, if a little long for use in class.
from Chapter Four
After getting Ong Qan to come, Cinggis Qa’an and Ong Qan decided to move jointly against Jamuqa. They set out downstream along the Keluren River. Cinggis Qa’an sent Altan, Qucar and Daritai as vanguard; Ong Qan for his part sent as vanguards Senggum, Jaqa Gambu and Bilge Beki. Patrols were also dispatched ahead of these vanguards: at Enegen Guileni they set up an observation post; beyond that, at Mount Cekcer, they set up another observation post; and beyond that, at Mount Ciqurqu, they set up a further observation post. Altan, Qucar, Senggum and the others of our vanguard arrived at Utkiya. While they were deciding whether to camp there, a man from the observation post which had been set up at Ciqurqu came riding in haste and brought the news that the enemy was approaching. When this news came, without setting up camp they went towards the enemy in order to gain information. They met and gained the information: when they asked the enemy patrol who they were, it turned out to be Jamuqa’s vanguard consisting of A’ucu Ba’atur of the Mongols, Buyiruq Qan of the Naiman, Qutu, the son of Toqto’a Beki of the Merkit, and Quduqa Beki of the Oyirat. These four had been going towards us as Jamuqa’s vanguard.
Our vanguard shouted at them, and they shouted back, but it was already getting late. Saying, ‘Tomorrow we’ll fight!’, our men withdrew and spent the night together with the main body of the army.
Next day the troops were sent forward and when they met, at Koyiten, they battled. As they pressed on each other downhill and uphill, and reformed their ranks, those very same Buyiruq Qan and Quduqa, knowing how to produce a rainstorm by magic, started to conjure it up, but the magic storm rolled back and it was right upon themselves that it fell. Unable to proceed, they tumbled into ravines. Saying to each other, ‘We are not loved by Heaven!’, they scattered.
Buyiruq Qan of the Naiman separated from the rest and went towards Uluq Taq on the southern side of the Altai Mountains. Qutu, the son of Toqto’a of the Merkit, went towards the Selengge River. Quduqa Beki of the Oyir went towards the Sisgis River, making for the forest. A’ucu Ba’atur of the Tayici’ut went towards the Onan River.
Jamuqa plundered the very people who had elected him qan; then he moved homewards following the course of the Ergune. As they were dispersing in this way, Ong Qan pursued Jamuqa downstream along the Ergune while Cinggis Qa’an pursued A’ucu Ba’atur of the Tayici’ut in the direction of the Onan.
As soon as A’ucu Ba’atur reached his own people, he had them moved along with him in haste. The Tayici’ut A’ucu Ba’atur and Qodun Orceng arrayed their troops at Ulengut Turas on the other side of the Onan, and stood in battle order ready to fight.
Cinggis Qa’an came up and fought with the Tayici’ut. They battled to and fro incessantly until evening came; then, in the same place where they had been fighting, they passed the night right next to each other. When people [the refugees] arrived, fleeing in disarray, they set up a circular camp and also passed the night in the same spot, alongside their troops. In that battle Cinggis Qa’an was wounded in a vein of the neck. He could not stop the bleeding and was in a great plight. He waited till sundown, then he pitched camp just there where the two armies had encamped right next to each other.
Jelme sucked and sucked the blood which clogged Cinggis Qa ‘an’s wound and his mouth was all smeared with blood. Still, Jelme, not trusting other people, stayed there and looked after him. Until the middle of the night he swallowed down or spat out mouthfulls of the clogging blood.
When midnight had passed Cinggis Qa’an revived and said, ‘The blood has dried up completely; I am thirsty.’ Then Jelme took off his hat, boots and clothes – everything – and stark naked but for his pants, he ran into the midst of the enemy who had settled right next to them. He jumped on to a cart of the people who had set up a circular camp over there. He searched for kumis, but was unable to find any because those people had fled in disarray and had turned the mares loose without milking them.
As he could not find kumis, he took from one of their carts a large covered bucket of curds and carried it back In the time between his going and coming back he was not seen by anyone. Heaven indeed protected him!
Having brought the covered bucket of curds, the same Jelme, all by himself, searched for water, brought it back and having mixed it with the curds got the Qa’an to drink it.
Three times, resting in between, the Qa’an drank, then he spoke: ‘The eyes within me have cleared up.’ He spoke and sat up: it was daybreak and growing light. He looked and saw that, all about the place where he was sitting, the wound-clogging blood that Jelme had kept on sucking and had spat about had formed small puddles. When he saw it, Cinggis Qa’an said, ‘What is this? Couldn’t you have spat farther away?’ Jelme then said, ‘When you were in a great plight, had I gone farther away I would have feared being separated from you. As I was in haste, I swallowed what I could swallow and spat out what I could spit out; I was in a plight myself and quite a lot went also into my stomach!’
Cinggis Qa’an again spoke: ‘When I was in this state, lying down, why did you run naked into their camp? Had you been caught, wouldn’t you have revealed that I was like this?’ Jelme said, ‘My thought, as I went naked, was that if somehow I got caught, I would have said, “I wanted to submit to you, but they found out and, seizing me, decided to kill me. They removed my clothes – everything – only my pants had not yet been removed when I suddenly managed to escape and have just come in haste to join you. They would have regarded me as sincere, they would have given me clothes and looked after me. Then, I would have jumped on a horse and while they were astonished watching me flee, in that brief moment I would have surely got back! So thinking, and because I wished to get back in time to satisfy the Qa’an’s craving for drink caused by his parching thirst, thinking this and without so much as blinking an eye I went there.’
Cinggis Qa’an said, ‘What can I say now? In former days, when the Three Merkit came and thrice circled Mount Burqan, you saved my life for the first time. Now, once more, you restored me to life when, with your mouth, you sucked the clotting blood from my wound. And, yet again, when I was in a great plight with a parching thirst, disregarding your life, you went amidst the enemy without so much as blinking an eye; you quenched my thirst and restored life to me. These three services of yours will stay in my heart!’ Thus the Qa’an spoke.
Guess who’s in Bejing! Well, not me anymore since I just left1 I snuck away from my conference for a bit to go to the Confucian temple and the Yonghe temple, neither of which I had seen in years. Yonghe is still pretty much the same, although 15 years ago there were not so many stores clustered around it selling incense and Buddhist tcotchkes. Actually, I think 15 years ago there were basically none, and now there are zillions of them. The Confucian temple and the adjacent Imperial University were more interesting however. Last time I was here they were pretty sparse, and there were not many people there. There were still not many people. Confucian temples are always nice and quiet, and a nice place to look at old trees. The exhibits had been updated, however, and there was a lot of stuff on Confucianism and its role in Chinese society. Since I like public history it was interesting to me, especially since most Chinese my age would have gotten no Confucianism at all in school, so it was cool to see this attempt to retro-fit it into the visitors. As you might expect, Confucianism was not really shown as developing, it was just created and remained unchanging, and the ascribed the ideas of a lot of later Confucians, or just Chinese customs, to the Big C. Confucianism was the essence of Chinese society, and still is (Which was not what they would have said 15 years ago) and Confucius inspired both the scientific method and the industrial revolution. Like most of these “”5000 years of culture Hooray!” things it was pretty overdone, but still very professional and detailed. They are getting pretty good at this.
In the University they had an exhibit of sorts on the Qianlong emperor’s lectures to his officials, which happened here. You may not have know that Qianlong was actually a teacher. Here is his office door.
His office
His desk
One of his classes.
Hmm. Seems a bit ornate for a Faculty member. Of course, Qianlong was really an Administrator, so I guess even if he did give the occasional lecture you might expect him to be a little better taken care of than the average temp. One thing I wondered about was if these lectures were a Qianlong innovation. I don’t think I have read anything about them, and I have read that Chinese emperors were quite different from Early Modern European monarchs, in that the Europeans were constantly on display and performing ritually in front of the ‘public’ (mostly the court). Chinese emperors were supposedly far less in the public eye, and these lectures would seem to be something that would tie in with the Southern Tours and other aspects of Qing imperial performance. Maybe I will check Zito when I get home.
June is the month to blog about student protests in China. There have been a lot of them, and like other types of protesters Chinese students often consciously or unconsciously use scripts. American protesters want to occupy an administration building, French students want to go on strike (or whatever) and they do these things because the students are embedded in a political culture where these are the proper ways for students to protest. This is not to say that new forms of protest are not developed, but that students, like everyone else, tend to choose a their actions from a set of roles that they are familiar with. Jeffery Wasserstrom’s book on student protest is probably the best source on the patterns of student protest in 20th century China. How far back do Chinese traditions of student protest go? To a certain extent they can’t go back too far, since China did not get its first modern university until 1898. On the other hand there have been students and schools in China for a very long time. The most interesting of the early protests come from the Latter Han dynasty. In the decade of the 160’s, during the reigns of Emperors Huan and Ling, students at the Imperial University (太學) were noted for their political activism. Like most university students, these were in an anomalous position in society. Imperial University students were members of the elite, but not elite enough to get government jobs just based on their family. Like later students they were also frustrated by their prospects. By the Later Han the curriculum at the University was considered hopelessly out of date and attending was no longer a reliable route to office. Students were deeply concerned with the problems of the state, which is not surprising, and they were particularly concerned with the problem of corruption and favoritism in official appointments, which is also not surprising, given that they were the ones most likely to be passed over if jobs were not given on merit. During this period the student’s enemies were not the Communist Party, but the eunuchs and their faction, who were rivals of the great aristocratic families. The emperors tried, without much success in the Later Han, to balance and stay above these factions.
In the first years of Emperor Huan, the fashion of student debate and criticism had taken the form of seven-character slogans, arranged in rhyming couplets, which were chanted in unison, shouted in the streets, and frequently written on walls…Short, pithy opinion combined with a good beat and rhyme made slogans such as these popular and influential. In a comparatively short time, under the name of “pure judgments” (qingyi 清義) they developed into a style of criticism that could be applied to any official or scholar and, as the name would indicate, such assessments were regarded as impartial and accurate summaries of character. Their most [20] effective practitioners, notably the student leader Guo Tai 郭泰, a man of humble birth but considerable intelligence and literary skill, gained immense prestige and a large following.1
So basically they were student-rappers. And, like later Chinese student protesters they looked to reformist officials with rhymes like this
A model for the empire,
Li Yuanli;
Fearless of powerful enemies,
Chen Zhongju
Hmm. I guess it worked better in the Han pronunciation. Of course the students lost, and many of them and many of those they supported in the regular bureaucracy were purged in 169. As became normal in Chinese politics the losers were accused of forming a faction (部黨). This was a serious accusation, since there was no tradition of loyal dissent in China. Just as there was little hope that Zhao Ziyang and the student protesters at Tiananmen would be able to work out a compromise that would preserve both the party and the students’ principles there was not much possibility that that bureaucracy and the eunuchs were going to work out an accommodation. Both were competing to be the exemplars of virtue for the empire, and there could be only one of them.
Also like Tiananmen, the aftermath of the purge was not what you might expect. Although people were in fact fired and executed and exiled, in practice the witch hunt did not and could not go very far. In part this was because the dispute was between two factions of the elite, and the eunuchs could not massacre the entire bureaucracy. In part this was because many government officials were unwilling to hunt people down, and many not connected with the Faction were eager to give them shelter. Sima Guang tells a number of stories of men like Zhang Jian, who managed to escape capture with the help of many people he had never even met. Many members of the local elite were eager to associate themselves with a certified Man of Virtue like Zhang, and many of these helpers suffered severely because of it. Eventually Zhang found his way back into government, becoming Captain of the Guards.
Zhang Jian was crticized for his escape and its costs by Xia Fu, who said “He brought this misfortune upon himself, and then he pointlessly caused the involvement of other good and honest people. In order the one man might escape death, ten thousand households suffered misfortune. How could one live with that?” Xia Fu hid himself on a mountain and became an ironworker, dying before he could return to office.2
Zhang Jian and Xia Fu demonstrated two of the ways that protesters could deal with defeat, and here too the Han figures were part of a developing tradition. Withdrawing from politics (into business in the 1990’s onto a mountaintop in the 170’s) was a standard option. Sima Guang approved
Your servant Sima Guang remarks:
If the empire is following the proper Way, true gentlemen assemble at the court of the ruler to correct the misbehavior by the men of mean spirit, and there on-one who dares not submit. When the empire has lost the Way, gentlemen retire into seclusion and do not speak out, hoping that they may avoid misfortune from the men of mean spirit, and yet still it happens that some of the fail to escape.
The men of Faction lived in a age of confusion and disorder, when all things were out of place and the four seas were in turmoil. They sought to solve problems by the words in their mouths, giving judgments of good and bad so as to wipe out evil and restore purity. They sought to seize the snakes and vipers by the head, and trample on the tails of the tiger and the wolf. But it was they themselves who were injured and wrongfully punished, and the ill fortune reached their friends. Men of quality were destroyed, and the nation moved on to disaster. The pity of it! Only Guo Tai hand the insight and understanding to preserve his own life, while Shentu Pan (two men who retired from politics) realised what would happen and took appropriate action, not waiting till the final day. This is exceptional wisdom!
Obviously China has changed a lot in 2000 years, but it was odd for me to read some of this stuff and see some of the same roles and scripts being used that far back.
Pretty much all of the information in this post comes from Rafe de Crespigny’s work and translations, which are now available online
The behavior of the people, the cosmic order, and the stability of the state were all linked in traditional Chinese political theory. Disorder in one would lead to disorder in the others. This cosmology had been pretty much worked out by the Han Dynasty. A good illustration of this principle comes from Commands and Admonitions for the Families of the Great Dao dating from 2551
Formerly, during the latter generations of the Han house, strong men began to carve up the empire. The mighty encroached upon the weak, and the people became deceitful and shrewd. Male and female lightly engaged in erotic excess. The government could not relieve the situation and families did not impose prohibitions. Cities were plundered and the common people were victims of injustice, even to the extent of being made slaves. The people were being devoured )ust as mulberry leaves are consumed by silkworms, and because of their grievances they began to consider revolt.
The pneumas [emanating from) their resistance blocked the heavens. This caused the five planets to depart from their measured movements, aphelial and parhelial comets to sweep the skies, and the fire star to depart from its position as adjunct. Then powerful ministers began to fight among themselves and hosts of treacherous people led one another [in rebellion].
After more than a hundred years, the Wei house received the mandate of Heaven and eradicated all of these evils. Calendrical signs showed that this was so. Their ascension was-recorded in the River [Chart} and the Luo [River Writings} and in other portents suspended in the heavens. Conforming to the celestial dispensation and the propitious times, I received the mandate to be Master of the Kingdom. The Martial Thearch [Cao Cao] launched the empire.
If anyone is wondering, the reason I keep posting all these little quotes and stuff for use in class is so that future teachers of Chinese history will know where to find them. The main future person I want to be able to find them is me, since the web seems a better place to keep ones notes than a hard drive.
As finals week is here for many of us I thought this would be a good time to dip into Benjamin Elman’s A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Elman includes a whole chapter on student methods of dealing with the exams, most of which seem to involve cheating or some form of divine intervention rather than, say, studying. Below we see the 1604 optimus, top scorer on the exam, being given the answers by the god of literature while he is passed out drunk in the exam cell.
More interesting to me is what Elman has to say about grading the exams. Ch’ien Ta-hsin reported on his grading work for the 1782 provincial exams in Hunan.
Over 4,000 literati took the Hunan examination. The three sessions produced a total of 12,000 rolls of answers. If you separately count the papers on the [Five] Classics and the [Four] Books, poetry, discourse, and policy questions there were no less than 56,000 compositions. From the time we began to read the [essays on the] rolls until we made the final selections, my fellow examiners and I spent eighteen days and nights on them. The number of the rolls of essays was huge, and the time [to grade them] was limited. If we were to say that those we chose were always correct, or that even one man of talent was not overlooked, then, sincerely, I would not dare to believe this myself. We did our best, however, to open the path for selection widely and to evaluate the papers impartially. p.423
Elman has a good deal on ways that the Qing in particular tried to deal with the grading load. One method was to shorten the examiner comments on winning essays. In the Ming these could be several sentences, by the Qing they had been reduced to 8-character stock phrases and by the Late Qing to single characters (zhong 中, hit the mark). Examiners also skimmed over categories deemed less important and imposed length limits. Unfortunately none of this seems to have worked. Exam results were widely regarded as fairly random, with little stability in rankings from exam to exam. The bumbling exam-grader became a stock figure of Qing fiction. Doubtless multiple choice exams would have solved all these problems of essay-grading, but China failed to make this educational breakthrough.
BibliOddyssey has a nice post up with cool pictures from the World Digital Library. The site has images from all over the world, and a really neat interface.
This is an image from a Qing dynasty edition of the Shanhaijing. They have a good bit of Chinese stuff, including a zoom-able 1900 map of Beijing for those interested in the Boxers. Also a lot of stuff for those interested in the rest of East Asia.
Via HNN some information on standards for teaching history at the college level. For those of you who are not Americans, there has been a big push towards “accountability” at all levels of education. At the Primary and Secondary level (up to age 18) this has meant No Child Left Behind, a set of standardized tests that students take, the results of which should be used to figure out what school reforms are needed.1 At the college level this has meant much more focus on “outcomes assessment” when you go up for re-accreditation and such.
Up to this point history teachers in college have not had to think too much about this. So far outcomes assessment has just meant that that pointless drivel you send to accrediting bodies now is slightly different from the old pointless drivel. At the NCLB level history is not a tested subject. This means that in the schools my kids go to history is now slightly less intellectually important than gym. High math scores mean more funding. History does not mean money, and therefore does not mean anything.
Now the states of Indiana, and Utah are moving towards establishing standards for their undergraduate history majors. These have been inspired by the Bologna process2 in Europe, which is an attempt to harmonize education throughout the EU.
If you click through and look at the standards the bulk of them are about what American administrators would call competencies. “Ability to define research topics suitable to contribute to historiographical knowledge and debate” etc. A fair number of these are things that it is hard to imagine an American school requiring of its students, like mastery of a foreign language. Most of them however are thing that I think most historians would like their students to know how to do. The thing I find odd about all of these lists of skills is how poorly they line up with how American academics and American students think about curriculum. My department has a methods course that is supposed to teach students all the research skills and whatever they need to be a historian. We assume that these skills will be reinforced in other classes but we are perfectly well aware that there is not much systematic attempt to do this. Instead most classes have geographical, period and thematic names (U.S. since 1877, Byzantine History, Mob Violence in American History etc.) We think, and students seem to agree, that the process of becoming educated as a historian (and most of our kids are not going on to Ph.D.s) is partly a process of learning a set of skills (and practicing them over and over, hopefully) but mostly a process of learning about lots of different times and places and different types of historical questions. Students in for advising rarely get excited when you tell them that they could take a class on “Knowledge of and ability to use the specific tools necessary to study documents of particular periods (e.g. palaeography, epigraphy” but they do like the sound of “French Revolution”
Of course this may just be a sign that we and our students don’t know what we should be doing. Outcomes assessment people hate classes. From the linked NYT article
Go to a university catalog and look at the degree requirements for a particular discipline,” Mr. Adelman said. “It says something like, ‘You take Anthropology 101, then Anthro 207, then you have a choice of Anthro 310, 311, or 312. We require the following courses, and you’ve got to have 42 credits.’ That means absolutely nothing.[Italics mine]
One complaint that turns up in both the NYT and the IHE pieces is that current degrees are not transparent enough. I find this true, but a minor point. If school board looking to hire a history teacher has nobody who can figure out what “HIST 104 U.S. to 1865″ means the solution is more competent HR people. There is a deeper divide here however between those who want to “tune” or harmonize higher ed (lets call them river crabs) and Us, (who I guess you could call the Grass Mud Horse brigade)3 Traditionally faculty like to split knowledge up into chunks, which we call classes, and becoming educated, or at least getting a degree, is a process of passing a certain number of chunks. Lots of us are unhappy with various aspect of how this model works, but the Bolongna process is not just a tweaking of the old model, it is replacing it with something totally different. For the River Crabs the study of the past is not learning a set of skills fairly quickly and then applying them to as many cases as possible, it is mostly a process of learning skills (which are pretty much portable between times and topics), and applying them is pretty much an afterthought.
In the Bologna document only a handful of the 30 requirements deal with “coverage” issues, and they do so in very short bullet points.
-Detailed knowledge of one or more specific periods of the human past.
-Knowledge of European history in a comparative perspective
-Knowledge of local history
-Knowledge of one’s own national history
-Knowledge of the general diachronic framework of the past.
-Knowledge of the history of European integration
-Knowledge of world history
So I guess if they did dirty themselves with coming up with a set of classes for students to take it would be 70% methods classes and 30% or less content, with very little student choice. Yes, I don’t like the method/content distinction either, but my point here is that these are two very different ways of approaching education, and I doubt that they can be harmonized.
My college roommate was a music lover. He had a lot of records and a fairly cheap stereo to play them on. Mostly he spent his money on records. The guy next door was an audiophile. He had a really incredible stereo system that he was constantly tweaking and buying new parts for. He had about 20 records.
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