Pandemic, Education Technology, Platonic Considerations

It is a rather extraordinary success of modern science that we have vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, especially considering that there other coronaviruses in existence prior to the pandemic, and there had been no vaccines for those. With that in mind, about a year ago, I started saying to those close to me that everyone will become infected eventually. That was the entire point of "flattening the curve" and "elimination" strategies; keep the infection rates down so the health systems can cope. Now people can become infected but will resist the infection with vaccines if they have been applied. In the meantime, the pandemic marches on and as it has now caused three million deaths, I penned a few words on the matter of developmental economics and health policy. From the relative safety and isolation of Australia, I can but look on in despondency as the case and fatality numbers continue their trend in places like the United States, India, Brazil, and many others.

It is also from this vantage point that I have two new short initiatives in recent days. The first arose from rage-quitting a frankly terrible course that I found myself enrolled in teaching online learning. I thought it might be useful for my own teaching and, whilst it did include some interesting, if speculative, edge-cases for education theory (heutagogy, rhizomatic learning). But the actual content was simply the worst I had ever encountered in any of the numerous tertiary courses that I have taken, with no consideration of the suggested tools in their operating context, or with policy considerations. I expressed my considered opinions quite bluntly in leaving the course but, not being the sort of person who likes to convert problems into opportunities, I have now started elaborating a more prescriptive solution on how one should such tools for educational purposes, for publication in an appropriate journal. Finding a co-author or two of a like mind on the issue would be excellent as well, he hints broadly.

Recently I have also been inspired to dust-off some old notes regarding Plato's Symposium, the famous drinking-party of the (male) philosophers in praise of the god Eros. It is from this narration that we have derived the terms "Platonic friendship" and "Platonic love" in popular culture, although they are obviously not used in the text itself. To be fair, some popular advice surrounding such terms can be quite useful and even nuanced to the complexity surrounding such a relationship, although there is no doubt that they are removed from the "ladder of love", expressed in the Symposium (from physical desire to love of the idea of beauty itself). One element that really intrigues me is the reported relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, and the context in which the story was written. I am the debt of Bruce T., for first raising these matters to me some decades ago, and with scholarship in journals seemingly lacking in elaboration on these matters, I find myself beginning another journal article. Again, I will find among my friends surely there is someone who is sufficiently well-versed in the classics to contribute.