Tag: #FOWC

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Four Things I Learned about Learning

The spring semester is coming to an end, for me and millions of other students across the land. It’s been a whirlwind tour, especially this past April when I was writing several papers, blogging every day, preparing presentations, and watching a ton of lectures. A fire hose! but now that it’s done, that was so-o-o-o fun! Let’s do it again.

I wanted to reflect a little on education itself to share four things I have learned about learning, being an older person back in the classroom. There are a few simple but BIG ideas, which unfortunately get lost among the theories and battles going on in the education world. Let me comment on some of those impediments first, then list my four things.

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Z is for Zhang Qian & Zheng He

They were greatest explorers of their era. One intrepid ambassador struck out west, across the Jade Gate, and stayed so long that he was imprisoned and married before coming home. The other sailed everywhere, in giant ships that dwarfed the little caravels that the Europeans had invented. He left a trail of sailing charts, reports, and temples all across the Indian Ocean.

At the end of the alphabet are two important Chinese explorers, ones who “discovered” the trading routes, over land and sea, which helped carve out where east and west might exchange their goods: the silk, the frankincense, the pepper, and the ideas.

Zheng He meeting traders from Asia to the west. From TopChinaTravel.com.

The stories of these explorers seem to be the perfect bookends to wrap up 26 A to Z posts about this amazing time and geography known as the Silk Road.

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Y is for Yersinia pestis

Burying Black Death Victims in Tournai, Belgium. Gilles Li Muisis, on gavi.org.

We aren’t sure When or Who or Where or How Much. We used to guess about What, although now we seem to be sure. And, when I say we, I do mean scientists and people who study facts and sometimes historians who pay attention to them, instead of making up malarkey.

I’m talking about the Black Death, which I already covered last year in the Renaissance and the letter “B.” And I talked about it in a post on “How do they know?” so why cover it again? Because the key truth about the 14th century plague, the one which devastated Europe and is thought to have come across the Silk Road, is that there are so many unanswered questions.

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