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Nadin, Mihai, 1938-

"The Civilization of Illiteracy"

Let us first notice that, due to the new
pragmatic framework, we are more and more in the situation to
disseminate every and any type of information to any imaginable
destination. The interconnectivity of business and of markets
creates the global economy. In contrast, our school and college
systems, as separate from real life, and conceived physically
outside our universe of existence, are probably as anachronistic
as the castles and palaces we associate with the power and
function of nobility; or as anachronistic as the high stacks of
steel mills we associate with industry, and the cities we
associate with social life. Some alumni might be nostalgic for
the Gothic structures of their university days. The physical
reference to a time "when education meant something" is clear-as
is the memory of the campus, yet another good reason to look at
the homecoming party in anticipation of the football game, or in
celebration of a good time (win or lose).
To make explicit the shift from a symbolism of education,
coordinated with the function of intellectual accomplishment, to
a stage when debunking this symbolism, still alive in and
outside Ivy League universities, is an urgent political and
practical goal is only the beginning. There is no justification
for maintaining outmoded structures and attitudes, and investing
in walls and campuses and feudal university domains. As one of
the successful entrepreneurs of this time put it, "anything that
has to do with brick and mortar and its DISPLAY is-to use some
poetic license-dead.


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