Comments on: Classes I Keep Thinking Of Teaching

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:44:10 +0000

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:41:03 +0000

Tuchman’s _The March of Folly_ might be good for the failure class.

By: bbenzon

bbenzon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:00:32 +0000

Also, might want to take a look at Piaget's Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Children. It is, IMO, one of his best. You probably wouldn't want to use the whole things, but you might find some useful exerpts.

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 19:41:14 +0000

For Games and Leisure, I would think Jennifer Price’s article in Pacific Historical Review would be a must, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Skiing”

The article doesn’t live up to the title, but then again. How could it?

By: bbenzon

bbenzon — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:26:56 +0000

Sounds like an interesting course. In principle, some primate stuff would be useful, perhaps even some stuff on play in mammals. There is some literature on rough-and-tumble play & Jaak Panksepp talks about it in his Affective Neuroscience volume. You might want to look at some of the literature on tourism, which links, of course back the 19th century and the notion of a Grand Tour among the wealthy. Judd and Fainstein's The Tourist City is an useful anthology. With tourism, of course, we're talking about the commodification of "experience" and of "culture." Which also leads us to Disneyland and Epcot.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 01:34:29 +0000

Hestal, I guess my thought is that the question of whether there are lessons to history has to be an open one in a *course*, e.g., students have to find their own way to that. Because there are strong arguments that what you learn from history is meaning, about what human life is and what it might be for, and equally strong arguments that what you learn is what not to do and what to do right the next time. I tend to think the latter, most of the time, but I don’t think I can tell the students as an imperative that it is one or the other. Sometimes, in fact, I think they need to at least be made to face the possibility that the most important thing is the search for meaning, because they’re too inclined, in too easy a manner, to assume that all problems can be fixed, and that they’re the ones to do the fixing.

Play and Leisure is next year; the Cross and Walton is already on my list of things I’m sure I want to use. Homo Ludens also. Maybe some good material on play among primates? I’m thinking of spending a goodly time on the social history of leisure in 19th Century Europe and the US, which is a pretty rich historiographical vein, but I also want to read some much older work on the comparative history of games. I’m also thinking of a few fictions on the idea of games plus also obviously some recent “game studies” scholarship on computer and video games.

By: bbenzon

bbenzon — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:12:19 +0000

What are you thinking of doing in the play and leisure course? Have you seen Cross and Walton, The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century?

By: hestal

hestal — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:59:27 +0000

I’m sorry to keep beating this horse, but I spent my career doing things that people said could not be done. I was not alone, but it did happen that way. We succeeded because we were open to new ideas, new technologies, and we were willing to work our butts off in followng a rational process with specific goals. I just can’t accept the idea that there are no lessons from history and I mean real lessons — the kind you could put in a book(s) and teach in classes, just as there are lessons about bridge-building. But I have bugged many others, not just you, in asking about this and you appear to be the most open-minded about it. One famous historian, and I mean really famous, said that the only lesson he knows is that this, whatever it is, has happened before and if we got through it then, we will get through it again. So if you, and he, and they are right and there are no real lessons of history, then why don’t you guys make some public announcement to that effect and cancel that saying about “learning or repeating?” Not wanting to give offense. I appreciate your patience and your ideas. I learn something worthwhile more often from your site than any other source in my reach, and all I do is learn. So another question, is there a book or something in which someone has spoken to the “no lessons” idea? Thanks.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:42:27 +0000

I certainly would plan to explore that question, of whether failure can be avoided, and how. But I wouldn’t want to insist that I have a certain answer to that question. I think this goes under the heading of whether there are lessons to history or not, to recall that discussion. There’s one part of me that says, sure, you can learn about certain patterns in complex social and institutional failures and learn how to fix them; there is another part of me that says, you can become wise about the *meaning* of failure and thus humble about its possibility, but not necessarily hope to avoid it consistently.

By: hestal

hestal — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:06:18 +0000

I am taking a break because my 67-year-old body failed to tolerate the high temperatures while mowing the grass.

Technological failures such as the series leading up to heaver-than-air flight are easy to understand. The people involved were sincere and were doing science for the most part as they neared victory.

But in the other cases, as you delve into why failure happened, are you going to offer solutions — how to avoid such failures in future?