| This
pilot site was built by higher-education humanities
scholars who have awakened to the combined practical and intellectual challenge
to higher education posed by business in the era of "knowledge
work," "learning organizations," and "information
society." |
| Pedagogue
-- from Greek, paidagogos, slave who escorted children to school |
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Since
the 1970's, business has moved toward a "postindustrial"
model whose principles of decentralization, flexibility, lifelong-learning,
just-in-time, diversity management, and so on realize on the bottom line
what humanists have in the same time period speculated upon in their idiom
of "postmodernism," "episteme," "interdisciplinary
studies," "multiculturalism," etc. Conceptually, "knowledge
work" in business and "knowledge" in academia are now in
some (if not all) respects parallel. |
| Meanwhile,
a combination of demographic and economic factors has ensured that business
knowledge work and academic knowledge are not just parallel. Increasingly
they merge. Whether told by a university administrator, a state legislature,
or, at a further remove, the "general public," the message to
the academy has been: downsize
and restructure, or else. Considerations of "cost"
and "productivity"
have never pressed more closely upon academics than now, when such considerations
are escorted by the philosophy that business is itself all about knowledge. |
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| Cybernetics
-- Greek, kybernetes, pilot, governor (from kybernan,
to steer, govern) |
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Meanwhile,
too, information technology
in both the business world and the academy has created a shared medium that
makes inevitable the evaluation of education by the standards of business.
Granted that it took an unexpectedly long time for business investment in
IT to boost productivity
(one of the puzzles about IT in the past two decades), but now it seems
the "new economy" has arrived. Why should not the academy follow
exactly the same model of IT-enabled restructuring? |
| Palinurus--through
its bibliography of Suggested
Readings, its Featured Controversies,
and its intended future linking of resources and courses from around the
world relevant to the role of higher education in contemporary society--is
a place to reflect on these issues. The site provides an interface through
which educators can learn about the new
world of business, and business reciprocally about contemporary
higher education. Historical resources flank the "new" for
both business and
academia in order
to provide some perspective on the current rush to "obsolete"
or "throwaway"
the past in favor of "workplace
2000." Palinurus will also include resources with a distinctly
critical "edge." Whether polemical or philosophical in tone and
whether from one or the other side of the academe/business
divide, such resources show how passionately people ruled by "information
economy" care about what it means to "know" and "learn." |
Reflect
-- from Latin, reflectere, to bend back; archaic: to turn into or
away from a course
Critic -- Latin, criticus, from Greek, kritikos, from kritikos,
able to discern or judge |
| ? |
Palinurus
is under construction. At present it consists primarily of the Featured
Controversies section, a hypertext analytical bibliography of Suggested
Readings, and the bibliography's accompanying Discussion
Topics and Gallery of Quotes. Other
content is planned for the future. There
are several automated ways for visitors to add
to the site. E-mail is
also welcome. |
| For
the origin of Palinurus from the heated discussion of a particular group
of scholars, see the archives of the NASSR-L list (Jan.
1998) (390K file). |
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| Etymologies from Webster's Ninth New
Collegiate Dictionary |
Palinurus
Rationale