From my perspective, I find it interesting how quickly one begins to build up a mental image of students just from their posts--Nick wearing a fireman's hat. I wonder if others find this?
In any case, I am more or less happy with thing so far. My concerns for the coming week are that:
- we find two people who want to specialize in Unit 1 'Legacy of the Second World War' which means kicking off the discussion on the question 'was the Cold War inevitable?'
- We get the rest of the blogs up (and don't forget about aggregating them unless you relish the idea of checking fifteen different blogs every time)
Otherwise, I feel that things are on track. What do you think? Comments?
8 comments:
I has occurred to me that how the group dynamic works itself out might produce interesting data for a social experiment. Many of the normal conventions of social interaction have been slightly altered. Those of us who usually dominate with our physical presence and personality may find ourselves struggling, whereas those of us who are a bit shy might flourish, many of us have never met and may never meet, there will be misunderstandings, preconceptions, paranoia, races to be the first to post bright ideas or responses to the tutors musings... Aah, what fun.
Bring it on.
Very true, Nick. As an experiment in social science I thikn there's a great deal of interesting things here to pursue. I've a mind to publish something about what we experience. There are other online programmes but this one is unique in a number of respects, not least its subject matter and students, but also in the manner of its delivery (the use of blogs, for instance).
Definitely, perhaps KCL's School of Social Science and Public Policy has a course that might be interested in collecting the data. That said, this student cohort may be a little too unusual and turn up some trends that are difficult to interpret and throw up poor conclusions about how 'real people' interact in a limited/restrained social environment such as this. Nevertheless, it's a good story.
I fear that the military are a poorly understood bunch (and that includes by academics). Indeed, I found myself taking exception to your own comments, over on Samantha's blog, re 'the Practitioner's Approach' - "People whose job it is to fight wars sometimes think that studying them in an intellectual manner will help them fight better." I would be surprised if this was the reason why many of the Army Officers have embarked upon this course and would expect the true explanation to be somewhere closer to an interest in what you called the philosophical approach (we're all just romantics who secretly want to be heroes!), or otherwise just the simple pursuit of professional credability in a profession where just about everyone is well trained and very good at their job and the things that divide us are intangible at best.
Aah, credability. Hopefully we will be discussing the phenomenon of credability in lieu of physical/actual capability (ie, to punch above ones own weight) later in the course.
Note to self: Retire to safe distance, watch safety fuse burn down and wait for explosion of comment.
You should not take exception as my intention was not to suggest that that in fact was the approach of the Army officers taking the course. (Althuogh reading it over I can see how you could infer that from the way I said it). So, to clarify, what I might have made more clear is that these are 'ideal'categories, archetypes, which would not wholly and completely apply to most real individuals for whom some combination of motivations would apply (in varying measure). As I said of my own motivation which began rather much as a practitioner. When I began my BA in 1987 I was in the military and studied Russian language, politics and history because I thuoght it was a good idea to 'know my enemy'--as did the army which paid my way through. Imagine my anoyance in the summer of 1991 when having just completed my honours research essay on 'The Sea in Soviet Strategy' they had the bad grace to dissolve the country! Perhaps I adopted a more 'phiolosophical' approach because the thing which I'd been taking a 'pratitioner's' interest in up and went away.
You've hit on something, thuogh, which I did not state but is very clearly true: the 'pragmatic' approach which says that this will help distinguish me in my chosen career and help me step into an equally rewarding one when I retire, whenever that might be. Is that fair, do you think?
Have you posted this over on Samantha's blog? Starting to think I might have been misinterpreted in other ways too. Tricky thing this on-line communication.
Perhaps 'take exception to' was a little aggressive. I must work on my charm.
I think that yes, there is at least one other category - the pragmatic approach. Of course, few things are as simple as that and, as I'm sure you'll agree, few people will fit entirely into one category and will probably have traits and intentions that fit into several.
I am not sure were I fit, or indeed if it is best for me to judge in any case (perhaps, if they have a care to, historians and academics will one day argue over this very issue!). We are all ulimately judged following our actions regardless of or inspite of our intentions. Guderian, Clausewitz, Liddell-Hart et al; all continue to be judged long after the smoke had cleared from their particular battles (didnt Arthur Schlesinger say something about this reappraisal [of wars] in his opening paragraphs of 'The Origins of the Cold War'?).
My point? Unless we can agree that some approaches are more suitable for a given application, is there any point in the categories at all? Or do we think that people will naturally fall into their own particular niche?
'Unless we can agree that some approaches are more suitable for a given application, is there any point in the categories at all?'
Hmmmm... good question. I am at home now on R & R so I'll not reply now. I'm putting this up just to remind myself that I OUGHT to have an answer.
No wait, answer is coming...
Possibly there is no point because when I noted them it was more as a typology, a first-person perspective observation of types, rather than a theory to be operationalized (ie., to have something done with). But then I wouldn't have said it if there hadn't been some unconscious theorizing going on there at the back of the brain. I think this is it: it's not whether an approach is more or less suitable for a given application, it is that understanding others fully depends in part on understanding the approach they are coming from. It is, then, akin to when we say 'I understand your perspective' thuogh I might disagree with what it is you're concluding from that viewpoint.
Work on your charm? How possibly could you get more charming than the guy in your photograph? Does that not look to you like a man who is saying, albeit muffled by the gas mask, 'come sit with me brother so that we may exchange sweet reasoned views and build knowledge together in a spirit of harmony and tranquility?'
PS. The comment above which says 'deleted by author' is the same as this one. I wrote it without my glasses on only to note afterwards a number of spelling mistakes which wounded my intellectual vanity so I deleted and fixed it.
Intellectual vanity. Nice. It's funny that I find myself also taking time over my grammar and spelling etc than I would with my pronunciation in a face-to-face/analogue situation. Of course, human interaction is tens of thousands of years old, whereas on-line communication is relatively embryonic. We should not underestimate the importance of the subconscious facets of physical communication, body language etc. There was a very interesting article on BBC Online News on 20 Sep (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4263508.stm) about the emotional consequences of having a face transplant. It helps to highlight that we have evolved to instinctively recognise facial features and expressions as a critical part of our communication toolkit.
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