Handbooks / Personal instruction, was Re: journalistic

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Sun Jul 9 14:50:33 PDT 2000


At 11:33 AM 7/9/00 -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:


>Joanna Sheldon wrote:
>
> >
> > I heard from Carrol that it would be easier to learn breadmaking standing
> > next to someone demonstrating than from illustrations in a cookbook.
>
>Exactly. I presumed that could be taken for granted, forgetting that the
>rule on
>maillists is that any time one does not mention that the sun rises in the east
>one could be accused of claiming that the earth was flat. A traditional
>example
>(based on older anthropology -- I don't know if it has current status) was the
>contrast between handmade and wheelmade pottery. The former had to be learned
>through observation, correction, and practice, the latter being more of a
>technology that could be formulated in a handbook. Some years ago there was a
>brief article in Business Week on a glove a baseball pitcher could wear with a
>number of electrodes or something on it so one could get a computer record of
>precisely how the pitcher gripped the ball. I don't know whether it worked or
>not, but one sees at least potentially how gripping the ball for pitching
>could
>be rationalized. I wouldn't be surprised that if one scanned the doctoral
>dissertations in physical education that one would find a lot of material like
>that. Once you raise a "spontaneous" practice to the level of theory,
>practitioners can more consciously compare their practice to the theoretical
>model and correct it accordingly.
>
>Carrol

you're still full of shit to *privilege* practice as if it exists separately from theory.

'nuff said.

kelley



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