Mark writes:

> ... until we have some ideas about the world we are not really able 
> to understand it.

As a woman I have to disagree.  Having spent large amounts of my time 
watching children grow, I am unable to accept that we have ideas 
about the world before we have understanding of it.

The word `idea' is not synonymous with `understanding'.  My point is 
that our initial understanding comes from sensory perception and 
gratification as much as anything.  Those early experiences help to 
build the `framework' or `structure' within which we consider 
ourselves to be existing.  Comfort or discomfort, safety or danger, 
all such similar experiences are the root of our own personal image 
of the world we inhabit.  It is on the basis of those experiences 
(our primary perception of the world) combined with social 
conditioning (secondary experiences) that our own ideas are built.

My argument is that, particularly in the west, we have become so 
divorced from the realities of human existence (or the lack of it!) 
that we have forgotten what the primary motivators are.  I am just 
pleading for a little more down-to-earth practicality and a little 
less jargon and discipline position-taking.  Don't you think it would 
be refreshing?

We get so carried away with our own amazing thoughtfulness 
(especially regarding overseas students) with respect to support 
services, accommodation services, personal tutors, student 
counsellors, pastoral care, student-led learning, and so on, and so 
on to boring `ad infinitum' that we forget that our students are real 
people!  I am used to seeing tiny Taiwanese students looking like 
punched out rag dolls because no-one is interested in the personal 
physical cost to students.  The departments seem to think the paying 
ends with the handing over of a cheque or banker's draft.  I am 
talking about stress at unreasonably high levels.  My feeling is that 
one of the best ways for reducing such stress is to give students a 
bit more help with the structure of their work.  I'm not bothered 
about esoteric or artistic issues here.  Couldn't we all stop being 
quite so precious about academic work?  All we are really asking 
students for is a good workmanlike job.  Why don't we just help them 
to that.

De


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