The four links associated with *WHY IT'S NEEDED and **RE: 2nd Ed. of C.A. are also directly accessible from below:
~~~~~~~~ THE USES OF CHRONOLOGIUM ACADEMICUS
AT VARIOUS AGES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A world map and Chronologium Academicus are both lifelong learning tools. They can both be approached and appreciated in many changing ways from middle school through adulthood. They both initially require conceptual understanding—one as a representation of the physical world, and the other as a representation of the intellectual landscape.
Once that basic level of understanding is reached, middle school students can differentiate the continents and some countries on a world map, and they get a feel for relative distances. They are likely to be years away from being able to fully appreciate the political, economic, social, or religious implications of geographic place, distance, and proximity. Nonetheless, we are very likely to agree that a world map should be in their classroom, and in their home, from middle school onward.
Similarly, at that point, with Chronologium Academicus, middle school students can make gross “continental” differentiations between academic areas and some subjects, and they get a feel for relative time. Year after year, they are shuttled from one classroom to another, to receive instruction in one subject or another, but are rarely if ever afforded an overview of how the things they are currently learning fit in with what they already know, or will subsequently encounter. However, now, with Chronologium Academicus, they can start to link and fit those things together. And, if they must, they can do so on their own, because the whole of education, and the connections between its bits and parts, can now be visualized. They are not likely to be able to appreciate the truly sophisticated uses that can be made of Chronologium Academicus. Nonetheless, because of the use they can make of it, Chronologium Academicus should be in their classroom, and in their home, from middle school onward.
High school and college students increasingly graduate with diplomas and degrees, but without an education. Why? Because they haven’t been taught where the individual trees they’ve studied fit in the forest. That change in perception is needed in order to transform accumulated information into an education. Too few have or are given that vision. Some get it through chance intuition, and a very few through instruction. However, with Chronologium Academicus, we now have a map of academia. Students routinely exposed to Chronologium Academicus should have a much greater chance of making that change in perception, and acquiring an education. Students are not expected to study Chronologium Academicus, and instructors are not expected to teach from it. Students can use it to try to make contextual sense of new information, or of already tenuously held bits of information; and, instructors can use it as a resource through which they can make their classes more contextual. However, its passive presence could be equally effective in producing the intended change in perception if it becomes a widespread part of the educational environment of our classrooms, and the intellectual environment of homes and offices in and out of academic settings.
Adults can readily appreciate Chronologium Academicus as a unique, aesthetically striking item. Its printed in burnt-sepia and old-gold on heavy antique-white map stock, and laminated on both sides. It can be placed in virtually any home or office setting in which a large world map or art print would be otherwise appropriate. In those settings, it can help restore some of the missing flavor and lasting substance of one’s past education, and serve as a visual reminder of the Broader Perspective in the midst of our usually narrower daily concerns. And, as a minimum, Chronologium Academicus can make the portraits of the famous of history and academia more familiar to those exposed to it.
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