The BIIIIG picture
One big question that seems to be floating around academic circles these days is whether tis’ nobler to teach students to understand foundations or to steep them in the latest research. My girlfriend has seen this debate in Biology circles, and I’ve seen it in Computer Science circles. I won’t pretend to answer the question, but it brings up an interesting (maybe false) trend in science: breadth versus specialization.
NOTE Rampant speculation void of supporting evidence follows… Specialization has been seen as an inevitable side-effect of our growth in knowledge. We have seen an explosion in -ologies of all shapes and sizes. The problem become instructing students in such a way that they get some breadth of knowledge about all these fields. Part of this is simply to broaden their minds, the second is to recruit new grad students. Soon there are so many -disciplines that teaching students some aspect of all of them because futile. Then what do we do?
Some would skip all that junk, and teach them about modern research. Let the basic get worked in to explain what is happening here and now in the broader field. Irrespective of who gets to decide what research is worth teaching, this approach bring up an interesting idea: has the trend toward specialization begun to reverse itself? We have entered into a period in our intellectual development wherein it seems that no field of study exists within a vacuum. Now, this may never have been the case, but it seems that some would have you think they did. A scientist or academic today does research that croses many disciplinary boundaries. Modern research seems to elude efforts to classify it into a single field. At the University of Colorado Dan Jurafsky recently won a MacArthur Genius grant. Prof. Jurafsky is a Linguist. He also happens to be listed under the faculty of the department of Computer Science.
Have we entered into a stage of intellectual development where disciplinary boundaries will cease to exist? Have we begun that great unification of fields at the end of which lies true enlightenment? Am I completely insane, and totally behind the times? I dont know…