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Warin

A novel idea...

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This is an essay we had to read for my English 110 class.  It really made me think.  And that's the idea.

Anyways, have a read and perhaps we can discuss why my prof calls this "the most dangerous essay I have ever read"

Quote[/b] ]Don’t You Think It’s Time To Start thinking

By Northrop Frye

A student often leaves High School today without any sense of language as a structure.

He may also have the idea that reading and writing are elementary kills that he mastered in childhood, never having grasped the fact that there are differences in levels of reading and writing as there are in mathematics between short division and integral calculus.

Yet, in spite of his limited verbal skills, he firmly believes that he can think, that he has ideas, and that if he is just given the opportunity to express them he will be all right.  Of course, when you look at what he’s written you find that it doesn’t make any sense.  When you tell him this he is devastated.

Part of his confusion here stems from the fact that we use the word “think†in so many bad, punning ways.  Remember James Thurber’s Walter Mitty who was always dreaming great dreams of glory.  When his wife asked him what he was doing he would say, “Has it ever occurred to you that I might be thinking?â€

But, of course, he wasn’t thinking at all.  Because we use it for everything our minds do, worrying, remembering, daydreaming, we imagine that thinking is something that can be achieved without any training.  But again, it’s a matter of practice.  How well we can think depends on how much of it we have already done.  Most students need to be taught, very carefully and patiently, that there is no such thing as an inarticulate idea waiting to have the right words wrapped around it.

They have to learn that the ideas do not exist until they have been incorporated into words.  Until that point you don’t know whether you are pregnant or just have gas on the stomach.

The operation of thinking is the practice of articulating ideas until they are in the right words.  And we can’t think at random either.  We can only add one more idea to the body of something we have already thought about.  Most of us spend very little time doing this, and this is why there are so few people whom we regard as having any power to articulate at all.  When such a person appears in public life, like Mr Trudeau, we tend to regard them as possessing a giant intellect.

A society like ours doesn’t have very much interest in literacy.  It is compulsory to read and write because society must have docile and obedient citizens.  We are taught to read so that we can obey the traffic signs and to cipher so that we can make out our income tax, but development of verbal competency is very much left to the individual.

And when we look at our day-to-day existence we can see that there are strong currents at work against the development of powers of articulateness.  Young adolescents today often betray a curious sense of shame about speaking articulately, of framing a sentence with a period at the end.

Part of the reason for this is the powerful anti-intellectual drive which is constantly present in our society.  Articulate speech marks you out as an individual, and in some settings this can be rather dangerous because people are often suspicious and frightened of articulateness.  So if you say as little as possible and only use stereo-typed, ready-made phrases you can hide yourself in the mass.

Then there are the various epidemics sweeping over society which use unintelligibility as a weapon to preserve the present power structure.  By making things as unintelligible as possible, you can hold the present power structure together.  Understanding and articulateness lead to its destruction.  This is the kind of thing that George Orwell was talking about, not just in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but in all his work on language.  The kernel of everything reactionary and tyrannical in society is the impoverishment of the means of verbal communication.

The vast majority of things that we hear today are prejudices and clichés, simply verbal formulas that have no thought behind them but are put up as a pretence of thinking.  It is not until we realize these things conceal meaning, rather than reveal it, that we can begin to develop our own powers of articulateness.

The teaching of humanities is, therefore, a militant job.  Teachers are faced not simply with a mass of misconceptions and unexamined assumptions.  They must engage in a fight to help the student confront and reject the verbal formulas and stock responses, to convert passive acceptance into active, constructive power.   It is a fight against illiteracy and for the maturation of the mental process, for the development of skills which once aquired will never become obsolete.

FYI: Pierre Elliott Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 until 1984 (with a very small break in 1979).  He is considered one of the most brilliant politicians and thinkers in Canadian history.  If you compared intellects, Trudeau is to Bush as Everest is to a molehill.

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whateva.

seriously, this is why liars...i mean lawyers are existing, there are so many things that are meant int those long winding sentences, and they are trained to deal with it.

unfortunately, not all ppl can understand the beauty of sometimes braind wrecking logics and grammars. it takes training.

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whateva.

seriously, this is why liars...i mean lawyers are existing, there are so many things that are meant int those long winding sentences, and they are trained to deal with it.

unfortunately, not all ppl can understand the beauty of sometimes braind wrecking logics and grammars. it takes training.

So you are proving my point smile_o.gif

You vilify people who are articulate (citing lawyers, who are hardly the sole keepers of articulate thought and speech), and then decry the time and energy that expressing oneself in an articulate manner may require.

thanks smile_o.gif

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Anyways, have a read and perhaps we can discuss why my prof calls this "the most dangerous essay I have ever read"

Perhaps because of this:

Quote[/b] ]reading and writing are elementary kills that he mastered in childhood
wow_o.giftounge_o.gif

No, but seriously, I don't agree with that essay. Thinking is so much more than just being able to express coherent lines of thoughts in words. It is of course beneficial if you can process something analytically and communicate your thoughts to others, but it is far from being the only important thing.

It's also not about individuality - on the contrary. There are many smart persons that simply aren't very good at expressing their thoughts. It's about propagating your ideas to people. If you are not interested in that then it won't make any difference if you are illiterate or not.

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I'd say lawyers are precise with their language rather than articulate.

As for the essay... hmm... it's certainly not the most dangerous thing I've ever read. It does have some truths, though.

Quote[/b] ]Yet, in spite of his limited verbal skills, he firmly believes that he can think, that he has ideas, and that if he is just given the opportunity to express them he will be all right. Of course, when you look at what he’s written you find that it doesn’t make any sense. When you tell him this he is devastated.

Dangerously true. People walk out of school with a diploma and they think that they can think. They think that they know what they know and don't need to know anything else. David Cross, an American comedian, said it best when he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Americans don't care. What does it say about our country when we have to read foreign newspapers to find out what's going on here?"

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Anyways, have a read and perhaps we can discuss why my prof calls this "the most dangerous essay I have ever read"

Perhaps because of this:

Quote[/b] ]reading and writing are elementary kills that he mastered in childhood
 wow_o.gif  tounge_o.gif

No, but seriously, I don't agree with that essay. Thinking is so much more than just being able to express coherent lines of thoughts in words. It is of course beneficial if you can process something analytically and communicate your thoughts to others, but it is far from being the only important thing.

It's also not about individuality - on the contrary. There are many smart persons that simply aren't very good at expressing their thoughts. It's about propagating your ideas to people. If you are not interested in that then it won't make any difference if you are illiterate or not.

lol. Stupid spell checker not catching my typos biggrin_o.gif

The point he makes, that I agree with, is that when you erode the ability to communicate, you erode the ability to think freely.  Orwell wasn't far off with 'Newspeak'.  If you remove the words that can express dissent, at some point the ability to formulate and articulate dissent will disappear.  Like it or not, language is the main tool with which we can propogate ideas.  Look at the most influential people of our time.  In general, they were competant orators or writers.  Why do so many people make fun of Bush?  In part it's because he is a poor orator.  And I think that likely extends to his writing skills.  

You can be brilliant, but if you can not convey what you think and feel, who will properly know?

For the record: I think the essay has fundamental truths. And that should never be dangerous.

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I remember my first class in grade 11 History - no BS this has stuck in my head - the teacher was going throught the attendance list and when he got to my name he stopped and asked me "what is thinking?" I just sat there looking confused for a few seconds and then said "I don't know". He kept hitting one of us at random with that question throughout the semester and no one could answer it in a way that would satisfy him. A friend of mine kept pissing him off by saying "A chemical process that goes on in your brain" :P.

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Perhaps a simple solution would be to make linguistic structuralism or semiotics a compulsory topic in school syllabuses. But that would probably just confuse people. As the article mentions, the primary purpose or drive of basic compulsory education in western society does not appear to be making people actually think.

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Quote[/b] ]The point he makes, that I agree with, is that when you erode the ability to communicate, you erode the ability to think freely.
Seems wrong to me. Ahh I should read your essay first, nice typo. tounge_o.gif

EDIT: Completely disagree with you. For a simple example, my father does not communicate his knowledge or ideas well, he's a Mechanical Engineer who specialized in material strengths and used to be a designer/manager(have to check proper term) at Bester Poland, so he had many ideas. He also checked a lot of work, most of it went into production. He has a terrible time explaining something clearly to me or anyone for that matter, but given the right communication lines (drafting etc.) he gets his ideas out. If you are looking for articulated writing, you won't find it in him, he is a technical person not a man of literature, his English is also terrible, so what. ;)

Same with me, I can understand many things very well but not teach them or write them out in nice fluffy ways, in any language because I have also switched languages a few times in my life.

Communication has nothing to do with free thinking, it takes your time away from free thinking, but it is necessary for some people to pass on the knowledge.

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Perhaps a simple solution would be to make linguistic structuralism or semiotics a compulsory topic in school syllabuses. But that would probably just confuse people. As the article mentions, the primary purpose or drive of basic compulsory education in western society does not appear to be making people actually think.

Do you mean grammar by "linguistic structuralism"? I think it would be more beneficial for schools to encourage for example critical essay writing and discussion instead of trying to find a solution by means of a prescriptive approach towards grammar.

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I certainly agree that critical essay writing and discussion can be greatly beneficial and even fun so should be encouraged. I dont think there is nearly enough discussion of subjects(at least in British schools).

Certainly grammar is entailed in linguistic structuralism as well as semantics and other elements. I think discussing anything in an open enviroment where ideas are introduced, criticised and evaluated can be very beneficial and thought provoking for students (at least i found it so) and that includes semiotics.

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As someone who enjoys the subtleties of language, I think the author makes a very good point. A complete mastery of language is critical to the thought process, especially when it comes to free thinking. And though you think you disagree Bn, you have to realize that the author doesn't necessarily mean a traditional language like English or French. Your relative is an engineer, and as such has learned the language of the blueprint and the structural readout all his life; so he thinks and expresses himself in the same vein. To understand this essay's true theme, you need to strip away the somewhat elitist tone the essay is written with- I've found that it is common to many English teachers (my family is full of them  tounge_o.gif ). The whole idea is that language, vis a vis communication, is critical to our society as a whole and to you as an individual, and that to encourage the sort of thought that advances both individuals and societies, we should endeavor to make sure that everyone is given the opportunity to master a form of language. And, in this particular case, the author is talking about the English language, simply due to the fact that so many people use it. While there are certain points that are up for argument about this essay (as I mentioned before, these are probably more due to the author's particular style and tone rather than his core points), I think this is ultimately one of the better papers I've read recently. I certainly see where the author is coming from- the ability to articulate one's self in the language of your choosing is a wonderful thing. For example, this morning I finished up the essay portion of my final exam for English- I could have done 4 pages and gotten an A, but I ended up with 8 or 9 pages simply because I enjoyed fully developing my points. It wasn't because the subject was incredibly interesting- comparing and contrasting Neo-Classical, Romantic, and Realist poets is not my bag- but simply the act of making a coherent point and supporting it makes all the work worthwhile.

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I get gigged for that all the time on my papers, always with the "too long" or "too developed" comments. I can't think or express myself in short bursts! tounge_o.gif

I made this point in another argument a while back and got slammed for it. I think that command of a language and the ability to effectively articulate one's self are signs of intelligence. The ability to share thoughts effectively requires they be transmitted in a clear and concise manner. Intelligent people seem to have a knack for doing this better than less intelligent people do.

Bn880, your Dad's language is the schematic, obviously his mastery of that form of communication is a sign of intelligence. The language mastered doesn't have to be English, or even verbal for that matter. Some of the finest minds the world has known spoke to us mathematically (Einstein, Nash) or musically (Mozart, Beethoven) or visually (Van Gogh, Monet, Adams). All of these men were genuises who mastered a medium of communication. They succeeded in effectively transmitting their thoughts, ideas and emotions to others in a pure and uncomplex form.

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I get gigged for that all the time on my papers, always with the "too long" or "too developed" comments.  I can't think or express myself in short bursts! tounge_o.gif

dilbert21463450030526.gif

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Perhaps a simple solution would be to make linguistic structuralism or semiotics a compulsory topic in school syllabuses. But that would probably just confuse people. As the article mentions, the primary purpose or drive of basic compulsory education in western society does not appear to be making people actually think.

Schools just and extension of daycare for teenagers not a place of learning blues.gif

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There's a difference between being wordy, and, you know... being wordy. Like, Tolkien for example. That guy would never use 5 words if he could do it in 50- and yet somehow, he's one of the more beloved authors of last century (heh, it's tough getting used to saying that). Dickens was *ahem* verbose also. So was Tolstoy. Being wordy can be a great thing, especially if what you're writing is interesting.

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Perhaps a simple solution would be to make linguistic structuralism or semiotics a compulsory topic in school syllabuses. But that would probably just confuse people. As the article mentions, the primary purpose or drive of basic compulsory education in western society does not appear to be making people actually think.

Schools just and  extension of daycare for teenagers not a place of  learning  blues.gif

You get out of school what you put in. A mistake many people make is that school is supposed to spoonfeed you everything.

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Being wordy is also good for your eh... love life.  rock.gif

chicks dig lame poetry smile_o.gif

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@ May 27 2003,19:19)]
Being wordy is also good for your eh... love life.  rock.gif

chicks dig lame poetry  smile_o.gif

heheheheh....you asked for it...some of my OAC English IDS is getting posted later tonight biggrin_o.gif

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@ May 28 2003,00:19)]
Being wordy is also good for your eh... love life.  rock.gif

chicks dig lame poetry  smile_o.gif

That depends on the persons personality. ;)

Being wordy is way better than talking simplisticly boring imho.

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@ May 27 2003,19:19)]
Being wordy is also good for your eh... love life.  rock.gif

chicks dig lame poetry  smile_o.gif

heheheheh....you asked for it...some of my OAC English IDS is getting posted later tonight biggrin_o.gif

crazy_o.gifnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I can't even stand the BS that I write for class.

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@ May 27 2003,19:26)]

crazy_o.gifnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I can't even stand the BS that I write for class.

Nothing I wrote, just some stuff I translated from Spanish to english and then analized from the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda smile_o.gif. Got 100% for it - the teacher loved the stuff. I however thought the guy was completely off his rocker in a very amusing way...and it's not like he's known for writting comedy...lol...you'll see what I mean in a couple of hours biggrin_o.gif.

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