From L. symposium “drinking party”
From Gk symposion “convivial gathering of the educated”
From syn- “together” + posis “a drinking”
Gotta love them ancient Greeks. They knew that if you mix wine with intellectual discussion, you have the makings of a heck of a party. AECT is no different.
Except it’s not a party.
The drinking happens after the “intellectual discussion”
There’s darn little discussion at all.
And most of it isn’t all that intellectual.
And THERE is the crux of the issue.
Because the perception is that AECT wants to be a symposium. I joined AECT because I believed it was a symposium. The idea that a symposium is about a given subject is actually a late evolution in the term - I wanna get back to the roots. Back to Academy. Back to Symposium. Back to the Agora and back to the banks of the Illissus. Back to the idea that scholarship happened in the plazas and bars and backrooms in sunny places around the globe. Back to when education happened as a by-product of heated discussions around amphorae of wine, loaves of crusty bread, heads of garlic, and jars of olives.
I want to get back to when scholarship meant something other than money you got because you could play basketball/baseball/oboe/test games.
Education needs to find its roots and stop playing with all the peroxide.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, December 12th, 2004 at 1:36 pm and is filed under General.
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