Re: what we are afraid of

Steve McCarty (steve_mc@ws0.kagawa-jc.ac.jp)
Sat, 9 May 1998 02:39:32 -1000

Thanks to Angela Burger, and I concur with her concern about
"our ability to be 'pure enough' to offer independent judgments, advice,
etc."
Behind my proposals for Constitutional safeguards and non-voting
affiliations for other organizations is this very concern that WAOE
maintain the higher ground of an educators' organization. Our diplomas
speak of obligations along with the privileges that concern most
graduates. Thanks to the ancestors of Yannis in Greece, Westerners have
a 2,500-year tradition of tests of truth with which to aim for
objectivity or disinterested judgement. As Academia is reconstituted in
cyberspace, most of these time-honored academic standards and ethics
will need to be applied, or else educational reform will be driven by
technology and economics rather than pedagogy and humanism.

"I've been on listservs which were essentially taken over by a few
people ... I wouldn't want WAO[E] to be raided and destroyed."

Yes, I've written about this in the following:

"Ideological Spamming vs. Academia in Cyberspace"
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 46 (19 May 1997)
<http://www.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v11/0044.html>

Cf. also:
"Academic Websites subject to Attribution Ethics"
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 433 (1 December 1997)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v11/0415.html>
and
"Reconstituting Academia in Cyberspace"
Online College Classroom List (25 January 1998)
<http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/occ/logs/0236.html>

WAOE aims to be a real organization of educators, not just a listserv,
providing places for educators to be based as well as communication
systems interlinking them. Disinterested educators are definitely needed
to apply checks and balances, such as through the Online Parliamentary
Procedures Committee--which plays a sort of Judiciary role--and the
committee that establishes standards for evaluating online courses and
resources--would it be another Organizational Committee in addition to
the Online Educator Development Committee?

Like Diogenes ever searching for an honest person, I would be glad to
follow anyone who lives by academic standards and ethics.

Sincerely yours,
Steve McCarty