Monday, November 21, 2011
Communal v Authoratative Acquisition
In my experiences, I have mostly experienced tensions between authoritative and communal acquisition of knowledge when I simply cannot choose which source to listen to. For example, in high school, when our teachers gave us different insights then my fellow students, it was tough to decide who to believe. This was true for solving math problems, writing essays, and a paucity of other subjects. Personally, I find it more useful to listen to the authoritative source, because he or she is specifically trained to help me in that area I am requesting help for. In addition to this, when using a communal knowledge source, there are often opposing sides to the same subject, and it becomes even tougher to decide within the communal source who to believe and trust. Therefore, even though I can get a variety of knowledge in a communal source, it is more beneficial if I just use one authoritative source so that I can be confident that the source is trustworthy, rather than trusting the opinions of many people I'm not completely sure about.
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I know exactly what you mean. In high school, I had excellent math instructors. However, my mother who is an accountant and my father who is an engineer would often show me alternate methods of computing that were far more effective than those I learned in class. Unfortunately on tests, my instructors would only accept the methods they had taught me. This was probably the most apparent clash between authoritative and communal knowledge that I personally have seen.
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