My Actifit Report Card: April 15 2021

Started work on a new short story, because that’s what I need to focus on instead of Aspects of Sand, right?

Mostly uneventful day today otherwise. I’m really glad that my degree program is almost done, not because I don’t appreciate all the things I’ve learned but just because I’ve put too many burdens on myself right now and I’m looking forward to a little breather.

I’ve been really intending to put my nose to the grindstone on this trivium thing, too. It’s hard stuff, though, especially for someone who’s got a very different approach to the philosophy of pedagogy.

It’s good, though. Every time I find a breakthrough I feel like I’m uncovering something that has been hidden, perhaps deliberately, but which was also earnestly sought for.

For instance, I read Stirner’s “The False Principle of Our Education” and I was struck by how much he seems to be longing for a return to what the trivium seems to provide. Of course, I do not know what his real motivations are–Stirner is a notoriously mercurial sort and I know my own reading of Stirner differs from what many people think he espouses.

Of particular interest to me is the degree to which the trivium seems to address things that we put a lot of focus on in modern education but write off as not having answers that match our epistemic criteria.

But I am perfectly happy to rely on tradition, especially where tradition seems to be in line with the findings we have. The degree of depth I’m finding in things as I go through the book I’ve been reading is astonishing when one considers that it was originally written over a century ago, and even then it was intended as a basic overview!

As far as I can tell, the only advances we’ve made in our studies have been people like Piaget, and even then I’m not sure how terribly relevant their work is when one considers that it is the subject for theorists as much as practitioners (though Piaget and Vygotsky definitely have discovered things that justify practices that used by laypeople, they seem to me things that laypeople should have been able to figure out without requiring such in-depth study!).

This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io

Walking