Hi Ender,
Interesting idea, and its lack seems to go hand in hand with the decline of the regimental system (comments Steve?).
As a formal model, I suspect you are absolutely correct, although it is still operative in many other areas including academia . A lot of it goes back to how organizations conceive of knowledge, and to the conceptual distinctions and valuations these organizations place on differing types of knowledge.
In general, most Western societies recognize three overall forms of knowledge: "logos", "gnosis" and "thumos" (I'm using the Greek terms).
I must admit to being prejudiced in favour of Socrates - that's Xenophon's Socrates, not Platos' . You absolutely right about the application, however. Attempting to apply this style of teaching and learning means that you have to have an emotional and psychological "mesh" (or "empathy") between the student and teacher. If this is absent, it will fail miserably.
- "Logos", from which we get the suffix "-ology" roughly translates as "authoritative word". This is the basic type of knowledge that is taught in academia; it is codified, put together into inter-linking systems and presented as "valid" (meaning culturally validated by whatever system the culture uses). If you have studied Max Weber, it covers both "rational-legal knowledge" and "traditional knowledge" (which is actually a bad translation of herreschaft - "blood right" is better).
- "Gnosis", from which we get words like "Gnostic" and "Agnostic" roughly translates as "experiential knowledge" - "what I know from having experienced it". When Socrates talks about "the man who knows", this is the type of knowledge he is talking about. At the same time, it's also the type of knowledge that can be "taught" best by a mentorship or apprenticeship type program. In general, academics use this type of knowledge, but most disciplines "hide" it from their students (Anthropology, qualitative Sociology and Social Work are the major exceptions).
- "Thumos" is the type of knowledge that we use the least n any formal setting. It should properly be transliterated as "body knowledge", although terms like "gut knowledge" are the closest translation. In most Western societies, it is considered to be "invalid", although it is used extensively in high risk / high problem occupations and frequently"validated" (i.e. justified) with reference to experience or intuition.
Sure, I'll toss in an offer of help as well. I run a couple of servers and have my own Moodle site. If you want to play around with trying to set up a course, let me know and I'll build a basic page for you and let you play with it.
As a note, I would point out that the SWC itself is acting as a mentorship venue.
Marc
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