"I'd rather know a little bit about a whole lot than a whole lot about a little."
Dennis Sylvester Hurd (1959- )
I found this month's copy of The Smithsonian Magazine engrossing, as usual. Just minutes ago I finished reading about such diverse things as The Moulin Rouge, the first inter-racial hotel in Las Vegas. Sometimes, I find it difficult to believe that present-day US, was, on some fronts, so different just a few years before my birth. Well, maybe.Prior to that article, I read about plasticity in the genes of those famously photographed tree frogs in Costa Rica. There was an article about the notorious slums in Rio as well as one on whether babies have an innate sense of morality.
Continuing towards the front of the magazine, I learned of a town in Japan which claims Jesus is buried there and also about a Net 2.0 geru who is critical of how the Internet has evolved making no room for a middle class. This is just a taste as I'm not yet two thirds through the wonderfully-formatted, digital edition which I downloaded from my Canadian library yesterday.
I wish more people had a big, broad exposure to the world. I believe, we need more generalists. In higher education, I think it's a shame most programs tend toward study of the increasingly specific. It produces intelligent people who know more and more about less and less. These scholars possess tiny slices of knowledge but little about how all these things fit together. Perhaps the only noble outcome of an educational system should be creating individuals who have a desire to continuing learning. Pardon my diatribe; I've always been frighteningly gestalt.