The Essential Arguments: Understanding Why Things Are As They Are

When I started this blog I wanted to write about the intersections of teaching, learning and technology.

But what to write about? Not that there was a deficit of issues and activity - but finding the right perspective to inform them any better than many much more brilliant people were never presented itself.

Until I realized my advantage was I actually knew far less than they did about their topics. They were experts - and that was their disadvantage. To an expert - by benefit of greater training and deep, deep knowledge - they understood, in the gestalt of their discipline, why EVERY detail was essential and critical to the integrity of the whole. Without one nail - the war would be lost. And this can often be their greatest single impediment.

Without that constraint I was free to misinterpret - nay question - the unquestionable assumptions of the academy. I was simply too naive to know how wrong I was. And that seems to be a pretty interesting way to look at things. Now I could have experts teach me. Together we could find the essential arguments that made me smarter - and might free them from their bonds of expertise.

So, at least for today as I write, this will be my new lens for looking at education, technology, innovation, disruption and the disjunctions they cause.