At says
>What you can say of the HIV infected community, I can say of the
>"learning disabilities" infected community. To say it in other words,
>specialisations ("academic apartheid") are conducive to producing
>learning disabilities rather than diminishing them.
I would be willing wager that the cure for AIDS will be discovered by a
dedicated specialist rather than a talented "amateur," a dabbler who
spends a bit of time with his test tubes and then moves on to literature
and the violin.
Einstein played the violin, and like most of us had interests other than
his specialty: but his discipline was mathematics, and he specialized in
it.
In our time the great artists--Picasso, say--are obsessed by their
specialty, and do not consider their times with it as involuntary
segregation.
The ideal of the "well rounded" person should include the ability to do
something well, and to love that something.
In this country we have an expression: "Jack of all trades and master of
none."
The danger of interdisciplinearity is that it will produce a Jack of all
trades who is master of none.
Steve Eskow
--Steve Eskow <dreskow@corp.webb.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>