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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 26, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: June 26, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Actors, Spectators, Town, Gown

June 26, 2004
This week, arriving, as it does, in the absolute midst of my cleaning and updating the site, focuses on a search for an identity that fits us. I keep trying on models that might fit. I know we can't fit perfectly into a European academic and community movement, for we Americans of the Western frontier, are in fact very different from Europeans. Our history and life experiences are so different. We have more space, less tradition, different cultural baggage, and surprisingly enough, more conservative approaches to learning. We're satisfied if our graduates can read and write. Europe has traditionally expected much more (with class divisions, of course, but we have those, too, like "Ivy League"). For example, in Europe there is a Cultural Analysis Summer Academy (CASA) focusing on issues of how to take education back from the academy into the community. I should think Rabelais would be wondering how we lost it in the first place, since in its origins, the university (the gown) was sovereign unto itself (and the Church), and the town would never dream of such epistemological (is that a word?) battles in which we find ourselves trapped today. Of course, Rabelais lived during the Middle Ages.

Notes:

• "epistemological - the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity" Merriam-Webster Online