[lit-ideas] Re: education

  • From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:34:32 -0700

Torgeir wrote


Robert wrote that he is "depressed and frustrated by the disappearance of plain speech and 
writing among young people," but that he "can think of no way of bringing it back."

I am sorry that you feel that way. I also like those who speak plain, like when 
I want to buy a sandwich and the proprietor plainly tells the price without any 
jokes, innuendos or tricks. This also applies to writing (not a sign saying 
what the price/might/  be, say).

When my interlocutor is convoluted I can get otiose. Anyway, though, I like to 
think that kids write a lot/more/  these days than they used to, and they write 
more stuff closer to their/vernacular/. I believe that is a good thing when it 
aids  in articulating needs and demands for people.

*I'm not sure how to think about that; I'm not sure how much more they write or 
in what contexts they write it. My experience as a teacher of philosophy and of 
the history, art, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome---considering how 
far back that experience goes---would lead me to think that the amount they 
write for academic purposes has not changed much. Whether they write more 
'outside of class,' I don't know, but my hunch would be they don't. (I have no 
clear sense of how much writing they do for 'social media,' like Facebook, or 
whether what they write in these forums counts as writing.)

Of course, a highly specialized and sadly underdemanded writing skill as is 
practiced in analyitcal philosophy is possibly less accentuated isa result or 
due to some third determinind variable. I don't know. And I don't know if it 
was better when kids could write perfectly legible letters of application but 
were unable to describe subjective explosions of joy celebration oppression 
hopes etc

*First of all, I don't consider myself working in 'analytic philosophy' (a 
field which few could define, although they claim to recognize it when they see 
it); but in any event, my longing for clear expression and plain writing would 
extend to attempts to describe emotions and feelings: there's no reason why 
these, these attempts, should relegated (or elevated) to a different/kind/  of 
expression, although the vocabulary in which they're expressed may be lots 
different from the categories and limitations of the old Logical Positivists, 
e.g.

*We expect good poets to write clearly, and not to claim immunity from doing so 
because, simply because, they're poets.

Thank you, Torgeir, for stimulating these incoherent thoughts.

Robert Paul



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