Tim Romano wrote:
>
> I took the gist of Renihan's question to be:
> "To what extent would it be true to say that
> medieval Europeans lived in a fundamentalist
> religious society?"
> This kind of discussion is certainly a way to
> address the "relevancy" question. Surely
> *some* of the academics who subscribe to
> the list are teachers and not researchers only;
> and for some of these individuals, the charge
> of irrelevancy must surface at least now and then,
> even if the only people to make such a charge
> are benighted freshmen and university administrators.
Indeed, most of those who have replied have been teachers, at one level
or another. And I know I've had to face accusations of irrelevancy.
However, I think our main concern in this case was not the relevance of
medieval religion studies, as the student seemed to believe the topic
relevant, and the initial question showed some enthusiasm. Instead,
following the withdrawal of the student while discussion on the topic
was still in progress, we focussed on the related questions of how a
student should proceed to gather information for an
assignment/essay/etc, and if querying this forum was an appropriate
initial mechanism, from the point of view of student, the student's
teacher and the forum members. Ultimately, this was not a `worst case'
scenario. This student, despite lacking perhaps in nettiquette (not
thanking respondants), had a fairly sophisticated topic, even if they
were unsure of how to proceed (perhaps the assigned topic was too
ambitious, but we could not judge that). On the other hand, what do we
do if a class of 30 grade 6 students suddenly appear and start peppering
us with questions of a simple factual nature (as happened on a Scottish
History Forum I belonged to for a while; I gave up when it basically
turned into a shouting match about the date of the sphinx).
The ultimate question George raised was `What is the purpose of this
forum?' One option is that the forum exists at least in part to provide
public education. One aspect of this could be raising public awareness
of the relevance of the study of Medieval Religion. However, I think
that there are several reasons why this should not be the goal of this
list. I don't think this is a good -way- of providing public education.
It is too narrow, and too focussed. And the level of expertise is too
high. The first stage in education has to be to instil a basic knowledge
and interest, a task better undertaken in a structured way with
reference materials, such as books and web pages. For a beginner the
level of discussion on this list is quite capable of being intimidating
and offputting. In addition, using this forum to pursue basic public
education is not an effective use of resources. Individuals on this list
should not be spending their often highly paid (well, OK, maybe not so
highly paid :-) and limited time answering basic questions for
individual high school students when they could be asking their own
teachers or looking in a library book. And finally, the size of the
audience is too small. To show that medieval religion is relevant to Mr.
Renihan is fine, but to reduce charges of irrelevancy we need to reach a
mass audience, the kind of audience that can only be reached at the
moment through popular books and TV shows.
Ultimately, I think of the purpose of this list, and similar lists, as a
cross between a disciplinary `departmental coffee room' and a conference
intermission. This is where the experts of the discipline can get
together and toss ideas around, bounce concepts off each other, ask
questions about specialised topics, find out what's new, initiate
projects, and generally engage in the kind of intellectual
cross-stimulation that coffee rooms and conferences provide. That's why
I'm here. I can get enough of answering basic questions when I deal with
first year students. In addition, once a student has gotten far enough,
it is worth their while to join in, often at first as a lurker, just
like they do with conferences. So in that sense the forum also acts as a
way of nurturing and encouraging new experts.
Ron
--
Dr. Ronald A. Ross
School of History and Welsh History
University of Wales (Bangor)
Siliwen Road
Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales. LL57 2DG
Telephone 01248-382154
E-mail [log in to unmask]
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