Dear LO'ers, dear Scott,
You mentioned in the following paragraph a quote of one of the basketball
players. It is a quote that I intended to include earlier in a message.
However at this stage of the dialogue, it fits perfect. First your
paragraph:
On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Scott Simmerman wrote:
> In a similar vein, I am reminded of the coach of the Utah Jazz basketball
> team talking with one of the players (Frank Layton and Jeff Wilkins) as
> reported in Sports Illustrated probably 15 years ago:
>
> Coach - "Son, what is it with you? Is it ignorance or apathy."
>
> Player - "Coach. I don't know and I don't care."
The Dutch astrophysicist Vincent Icke wrote once a column in my news paper
for the eight year-readers. He stimulated the youngsters to ask many
questions to their school teachers (such as "why is it dark during the
night"). He also stressed that it is not wrong if the answer is: "I don't
know, because this is also an answer, but don't think or say "and I don't
care".
And this is the crux of the ignorance-learning discussion. It seems that
we circle around the issue in our dialogue, because the word 'ignorance'
has different subtile meanings. Again we struggle with language. Since the
meaning of 'ignorance' could include both sides of the above sentence ("I
don't know" and "I don't care") it causes confusion. Therefore, I believe
that the proper antonym of learning should be:
STUPIDITY
Probably this word (wich meaning was included in ignorance) is what At
meant in his original message.
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
minnigh@library.tudelft.nl
Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <L.D.Minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>