"It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas, and thinking... "
In this post, I'm addressing the communicating knowledge learning outcome of our class, that is, that "students recognize differences in the forms through which knowledge is preserved, communicated, and experienced and can interpret the consequences of these differences historically and personally."
Printing is obviously a different way of preserving, communicating and experiencing knowledge than the folk and oral traditions we've talked about before. Less obvious is the difference between written (by hand) knowledge and print knowledge. However, as we talked about in class, print has some very important differences that allowed it to change the world. In the words of Paul Gray, who authored an article about Gutenberg for TIME magazine, "printing proved to be the greatest extension of human consciousness ever created."
Here are a few of my IDEAS about how and why printing has had such a huge impact.
Idea 1: Accessibility
Idea 2: Authority
Idea 3: Literacy
Which of these do you think had the greatest impact on the world and why?
Well I think that if more people became literate as a result of the advent of printing, accessibility of books and the authority of ideas became widespread. Think about it; if only a few Catholic priests know how to read, there won't be a lot of books outside monasteries because the common man wouldn't know how to read them. Additionally, if just a few Catholic priests know how to read, they can control the knowledge and therefore have all the authority on a subject, such as doctrine in the Bible.
ReplyDeleteNice, Alicia, I was totally thinking a Beauty and the Beast themed blog post would be cool when they brought that up the other day. Great movie! And I am so glad that printing and accessibility to books enabled more people to learn how to read. It's a good thing we didn't stay in that state where you couldn't get your hands on a Bible and read it for yourself. Imagine where we would be without that!
ReplyDeleteI would think that accessibility had the greatest impact - it allows self-taught learning, much more than listening to a teacher does. You can find what you want to know about, and you don't necessarily have to finish the book or go into greater depth, but if you want to there's a whole lot of information out there to find.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the one with the most impact is accessibility. As print progressed, the speed of printing made books much more available. This gives way to self-directed learning as more and more people had access to books. What a great blessing! I think our generation is losing that appreciation because we do everything electronically now.
ReplyDeleteWow, looks like accessibility is number one across the board. I'll have to look into that some more for sure.
ReplyDeleteII also agree that accessibility is the priority in communicating knowledge, you can see the trends of our ways of transmitting knowledge as time progresses all lead to more accessible knowledge
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