Thoughts on Brufee

One of my favorite quotes from the Brufee article: “We look at knowledge as something to wield against each other, not something we maintain in dependency with one another.” I wrote it on my Post-It note and we didn’t talk about it in the class discussion, so I wanted to bring it up in the blog.

Okay so the best thing about this quote is that I totally agree with it. I may have interpreted it differently than other people, but this is post is what came of my ponderings. There are just so many ways to think about it! On one hand, Brufee may mean that group work is a turn-off to some people because the brilliant ideas the group comes up with cannot be considered a product of one (your) brilliant mind, but a product of many others. You are not the focus, merely a contributor. And in our society, being the lone genius gets you more recognition. On the other hand, maybe Brufee is referring to the change from the past to the present, like Aristotle and Socrates. They lived in a time where people could just sit all day in some public square to discuss philosophy and knowledge. They thought collaborative thoughts, did they not? But in today’s society, we have this constant race going on. How many projects can YOU take on at the same time? What can you add to your resume to make YOU sound better? What sets YOU apart from other people? I guess I feel like knowledge is an accomplishment, and people using it against each other would take the form of competition in the job market, for example.

But then again, I should probably dissect this quote a bit further. Knowledge is “facts, information and skills” you’ve gained from “experience or education”. To “wield knowledge against each other” means to use it as a weapon against other people to one’s advantage. And although knowledge is generally considered an individual thing to possess, like an accomplishment to put on your resume, what one truly knows comes from other people who’ve expounded on their predecessors’ work, and so forth. Or maybe it comes from working collaboratively to find solutions, regardless of past or present. Brufee’s exact words again, were to “maintain [knowledge] in dependency with one another.” We are dependent upon one another, whether we like it or not. In the class discussion, we are dependent on volunteers and their opinion. In group projects, we are dependant on each other’s skills and input. But Brufee’s main point was knowledge. And in knowledge, we are dependent upon one another in order to advance, to add onto our predecessor’s knowledge, to add our opinions to the ongoing discussion that has existed since the beginning.