In this post, I'll respond to Professor Burton's description of oral knowledge as "communal."
In my life, the most meaningful communication of oral knowledge has not been communal. It has been personal and individualized. For example:
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- Private music lessons. I've taken private music lessons regularly (usually weekly) for 15 years. This amounts to several hundred hours that I've spent alone in a room with my private music instructor. These private, one-on-one sessions have been the most useful for my development as a musician--more useful than orchestra rehearsal, more useful than masterclass (when all the musicians who study with a teacher meet to perform and be critiqued in front of and sometimes by their peers), and more useful than "academic" music classes.
- Whisperings of the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost speaks to me, it does so personally and individually. Even during General Conference, when the authorities speak to thousands, the Holy Ghost communicates with me individually.
I think this makes oral communication very similar (not different) to the communication of folk knowledge, written communication, and print communication. I discuss these similarities below:
- Oral communication and folk knowledge. As we learned in the previous unit, folk knowledge is best done individually. Many of the experiences my groups members and I had teaching and learning were one-on-one.
- Oral and written communication. Written communication can only be communicated to one person at a time. Only one person at a time can comfortably read a letter written on a piece of paper. (In fact, letters are usually addressed to only one recipient!) Even emails, which are often sent en masse, are only read by one person at a time. That is to say, all the recipients do not read the message at once.
- Oral and printed communication. Similar to written communication, printed knowledge, even produced en masse, is only read by one person at a time. Mass-produced books are purchased by one person, read, then passed to the next. Only one person can check out a library book at a time.
In response to Professor Burton's description of Learning Outcome #2 for this unit ("see the development of knowledge institutions based around oral tradition"), I'd like to add that music conservatories and schools are institutions that have been set up around oral tradition--the oral communication of knowledge from teacher to student, from teacher to student.
Interesting perspective. While I do agree that oral knowledge can be shared on a personal level like a one-on-one, teacher-student relationship, I think that it is the collection of all these one on one sessions that then makes oral knowledge a communal thing. All these shared spoken ideas and songs become one big melting pot of information.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, in ancient Islam (during the Umayyad Dynasty), the people would orally share the laws and sayings of Mohammed. This was called Hadith. In a way, it was like a giant religious game of telephone. One person could tell one person that one person told them that Mohammed said something to a person they know. And then whatever Mohammed supposedly said became the belief of the people. For more information look at http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/hadith.htm
And that's how they ended up with different factions within Islam and different groups fighting each other because they all think the religion should be operated in different ways.
ReplyDeleteI think for for one-on-one teaching to become communal, the students have to have to opportunity to compare experiences and interact with each other. A teachers may change the way she teaches one student based on something she has discovered when teaching another, but, if they never interact with each other, they are not really learning as a community.
I like the comments on individual learning. However, I have often found group learning to be useful because while the teacher may be expounding and I perplexed, I don't know what the right question to ask is (other than the, I'm confused!). Other students usually come in here by asking something that brings things into focus. Also, the generality of a class discussion helps see a lesson from a broad spectrum instead of a lesson highly specialized to personal needs. To give an example, I'm studying physical acoustics and while I already know a lot about waves, I am learning from my class how many ways the same wave equation can apply to different situations. Sweet!
ReplyDeleteGood discussion! I appreciate Holland thinking through types of oral communication and just how "communal" they are (Would you say that communication from the Holy Ghost is oral?). I love how Kacee saw the communal aspect happening across time, and how she tied these concepts into Islam-- and Catherine built upon that wonderfully. It turns out that studying how cultures or religions communicate accounts for a great deal.
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