From a History Professor

“WOVEN” or “written, oral, visual, electronic, non-verbal” is a model from Herta Murphy and Herbert Hildebrandt’s “Effective Business Communication” (1984). Herb Hildebrant was influential in graduate business studies in the 1970’s from his post at the University of Michigan, where he is now emeritus. His wife Herta Murphy retired from the University of Washington in 1974 after a distinguished 30-year teaching career. No doubt their book is a kind of classic, but it does seem one of an earlier age. Is this really a curriculum format that is for the twenty-first century, or are we using something that is essentially a model from the 1970’s? “Electronic” at this point seems like a category mistake. Are we going to come up with our own personal definitions of these (and thus the model is hopelessly vague) or are we to follow a set of categories created essentially before the digital revolution was remotely comprehended? It all sounds clunky and backward-thinking, nostalgia for a by-gone phase of globalization. Is Detroit really the model for the 21st century?

Comments

[Anonymous]

Devastating observations. This is a good example of the reason why a grounding in the four traditional areas of liberal arts is needed for the core curriculum.... including History, in the Social Sciences.

--An Anonymous Professor

[Anon]

Wonderful. Georgia will march into the 21st century to become education's gas guzzler.

[Anonymous]

Equally important to ask is why we should follow a model from business communication for our liberal arts core curriculum?