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by marcusf 4691 days ago
So the pragmatists question is then naturally, how do you teach it? How do you shard the curriculum if not by subject? It seems a bit overbearing to ask each teacher to have the proper renaissance man's education of knowing a bit of everything.
2 comments

To me, a teacher's proper role isn't having knowledge and dumping it into someone's brain. It's knowing where to find that knowledge. My three Rs are "reading, research, and reflection": a teacher's job is to (1) provide useful material to consume, via lecture or homework or whatnot, (2) point towards larger resources for further exploration, and (3) guide thought processes to make useful conclusions.

A teacher's job is not to teach. It's to provide a space in which a student can learn. A focus is useful for this, but the focus doesn't need to be an abstract subject. It's a MacGuffin; it can be anything.

Classes are already discrete, and can thus be taught by different teachers.

As I understand, classifying classes into "disciplines" is for the convenience of administrative systems, like university deans. This classification is not a law of the universe, nor of the human mind. One can imagine the negatives of fitting learning into hierarchical administrative models.