Uncharted Territory

"...if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not sole purpose of education." J.A. Smith, Oxford Professor of Moral Philosophy






Yesterday, we began our very first lectures, the first by our director, Dr. Speck, on the idea of Oxford and learning and education. I don't know quite what to think about the above quote. The students spent an hour in discussion on the question -- "what is rot?" Is it ignorance? Deceit? Useless information? What is ignorance? Is it not knowing? Or is ignorance not knowing that you don't know? OR is it not knowing that you don't know BUT you THINK you know it? (You can see why my brain will be absolute mush by the time we come home.) We talked about examples of rot -- the students suggested a few that everyone agreed on (i.e. a person who doesn't believe the Holocaust happened or the concept of racism or the "silly season" in America right now with its fascination in celebrity gossip and the media and materialism) and those that not everyone agreed on (i.e. religious intolerance -- which I found fascinating that, in this staid, academic, and sometimes quite liberal environment, that this was very much questioned by Dr. Speck). All in all, it was quite a tantalizing discussion.

In the end, though, I subscribe to a quote from an unknown source (to me anyways). Though being in this environment tends to make you swing like a pendulum between feeling quite smart to feeling like the least intelligent person in the free world, I tend to gravitate towards the following statement:

"The geography of my ignorance is, as yet, uncharted."