Comments on: “Cult of The Amateur”–Early Reflections on Keen’s Work

By: Are Professors “Scribes?” I think therefore I’m not…

Are Professors “Scribes?” I think therefore I’m not… — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:30:18 +0000

[...] I have written before, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Andrew Keen’s book “Cult of the Amateur.” [...]

By: “Cult of the Amateur” and Twitter

“Cult of the Amateur” and Twitter — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:04:51 +0000

[...] “Cult of The Amateur”–Early Reflections on Keen’s Work [...]

By: Cole

Cole — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:33:00 +0000

I’ll add that collective experiences in a classroom probably cannot be compared to years of experience on the battlefield. The General with 24 years of experience has something 24 single year servicemen don’t have and that is wisdom. Big difference when you are leading to save than leading to simply teach IMHO.

I would argue that any subject can be taught in an engaging way. It may be more work to envision or design it, but it can be done. I know you’ve had good success in changing the way students lean about supply chain … you’ve envisioned and engaged. Wesch has worked really hard at it and I think if he were in a different discipline he’d find ways to do the same. Just a hunch, but I am betting he feels as though his scholarship and teaching are on even playing fields and he treats them both with serious energy. I’m part of design teams working to rethink finance, english composition, biology, communications, thermal dynamics, and more … all of the experiences, while not at the level of effort Wesch gives, will be remarkably more engaging than before. Either way, it is a good discussion.

By: Steve Brady

Steve Brady — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:25:36 +0000

Thanks for the comment Cole. I must admit, I didn’t hear that come out of the podcast, but then again, it’s a Saturday morning–I was getting coffee, settling in and the like.

I will say I filtered what was said through the lens of the book I was reading.

In regard to his class, and your podcast: you bring up the criticism of others that what he does won’t work in their classes. I actually have to agree with the criticism in some sense. What he does *is* anthropology with his students actively engaged as both researcher and subject. That won’t quite translate in other classes. That doesn’t mean that the technologies and approaches won’t work in those classes, but they aren’t as easily transferable.

For instance, in Anthropology the vast range of experiences of the students exposes a richer understanding of how people live and interact. In that sense (as my brother pointed out in a phone call) having 24 or 48 soldiers who all spent time in different units in Iraq make those “collective 24 years” meaningful.

For an understanding of something deeper, something that is not studying the lives of people (an area in which we all have some expert domain–at least in our own lives) then we can easily be mis-led by the sense the numbers seem to convey.

As you point out, different take-aways from the comments, depending on where we are in our discussions–and for you it was great that you could celebrate that realization.

By: Cole

Cole — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:06:29 +0000

I don’t think Wesch was saying his students’ knowledge out weighed his, it was that by taking a closer look at the students in his class he was humbled by their collective experiences. I doubt he would argue that they are more prepared to teach his course (or any other) just because they have a collective set of experiences taking courses. What Wesch was saying however is that he is tired of people in the academy putting his students down — assuming they can’t do higher order thinking at the introductory level … he was making the point that his class was ready to be pushed via a level of rigor is not present in many classes today. All he is saying is that it is critical for us to remember that a classroom full of students has an amazing set of experiences that should be explored and can be used as a foundation to assume they can be pushed.

I know for a fact he wasn’t saying they were more qualified as a cultural anthropologist than he. I felt as though it was an honest and open moment of self awareness that he shared with us during his talk. He was not saying the “wisdom of the crowd” was greater than his. I was celebrating the former as his realization made a real impact on me.