18.7.06
Planeta Incorporated
| The Great Pirates | 18 |
| In chapters two and three of his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Fuller outlined the formation of contemporary educational, political and economic systems as the product of the energies of Europe's sea trading interests, the men Fuller referred to as the "Great Pirates." Fuller's concern was to trace the shared origins of the specialist education he felt contemporary schools promoted and the origins of the mortgage and debt-based economy now institutionalized through, amongst others, the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. He argued throughout his influential career that both a specialist training and debt-based economy worked together to limit people's capacities to think comprehensively about opportunities and challenges facing global human and environmental communities. Rather than specialize in a particular historical time or place, Fuller sought patterns in the international development of interpenetrated technological, military, economic, political, and educational systems. | 19 |
| I use these chapters to provide a story framework for a world history class that helps organize study from the Viking invasions of Europe, the rise of Feudalism, the reintroduction of trade in the Medieval Ages the Crusades, the age of sea exploration, colonialism, and imperialism, to World War I and the Great Depression. In providing a succinct and coherent perspective on what is typically and vaguely referred to as European exploration, Fuller's thoughts provide greater time to focus on something other than these limited examples of human experience. By clearly identifying the narrative employed, criticisms of its shortcomings may then proceed. The reader will note several endnotes that briefly offer some teaching "moves" in this regard in reference to a popular high school world history textbook. |
# posted by alvaro @ 11:24 p. m. 
