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06349_Field_TCUP T4.txt
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1996-04-10
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passive wrappings but active processes. In his splendid work
Preface to Plato (Harvard University Press, 1963), Eric Havelock
contrasts the oral and written cultures of the Greeks. By
Plato’s time the written word had created a new environment
that had begun to detribalize man. Previously the Greeks had
grown up by benefit of the process of the tribal encyclopedia .
They had memorized the poets. The poets provided specific
operational wisdom for all the contingencies of life—Ann
Landers in verse. With the advent of individual detribalized
man, a new education was needed. Plato devised such a new
program for literate men. It was based on the Ideas. With the
phonetic alphabet, classified wisdom took over from the
operational wisdom of Homer and Hesiod and the tribal
encyclopedia. Education by classified data has been the
Western program ever since.