There is much media attention being given to yet another rally going on in DC.
I do not lend much credence to the idea that coincidence has anything to do with what is going on.
We are not yet at a point where we act as though we believe that all people are created equal, despite the pretensions to that effect voiced by some. Nor are we at a point where we believe that it is the content of our characters that should judge us.
Not one of us would truly stand up to the scrutiny.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
20100808.1344
Just a brief note today:
While I am sad to see this article, there is some strange comfort in knowing that it is not only teachers whose "real" jobs are being screwed with...
While I am sad to see this article, there is some strange comfort in knowing that it is not only teachers whose "real" jobs are being screwed with...
Saturday, August 7, 2010
20100807.1404
My daily reading brought me to this article today. In it, Bob Herbert laments the decline in the United States' relative standing among the college-educated. In it also, he twice cites Lady Gaga as evidence of the brain-drain that he asserts is taking place in the US (he also lumps in Lohan and Snooki).
I am not fond of Lady Gaga (or the other two--hell, I'm not even sure who "Snooki" is). And I do think that Herbert's comment that the United States "often holds intellectual achievement in contempt" is fairly accurate, as I think I have discussed (here, here, and here, among others). Even so, I find that I have questions about Herbert's article.
One of them regards the very issue of relative standing. He writes that the College Board tells us that the US, "once the world's leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations." Assuming that this is true (and I am not contesting the factual basis), there remains the question of what the percentages are. If the percentage of US young people with college degrees has remained constant, but eleven other countries' percentages rose markedly, that would create the change that Herbert notes without there being any actual drop in the percentage of US students who get their funny little pieces of paper.
I would be interested in seeing the College Board's report for myself.
Another question I have is why Herbert expresses such vitriol towards pop-culture figures as he does. As I note above, I am not terribly fond of the people Herbert references; I think them execrable, in fact, and am greatly annoyed that they are able to make as much money as they do for contributing little. But I am also convinced that they are no worse than the schlock of any previous generation--and there has been quite a bit of it in every time. Much of Milton is nigh-unreadable. Not all of Shakespeare is good. Even Chaucer had bad days. And they are held up as the trifecta of superior English literature.
Given this, can we really be surprised that people like crap?
I do agree with Herbert's general thrust, that the people of the United States as a whole do not adequately intellectually engage with the world around them. I see it repeatedly in every class I teach. In each, there are students who are already engaged, there are others who are willing to engage, but there are always some who simply want to get the credit and move on, doing as little as possible and caring not one whit for what they do. And while I believe that it is too much to expect that all of the students who come into my classroom will have the same love of learning as I do, or the same regard for the subject matter, there are always those who are not even open to the possibility that there is something worthwhile in opening the mind and accepting challenges to it.
The simple truth is that it is not easy to wrestle with concepts and ideas. It is not easy to train the mind to be able to question itself and its assumptions. It requires continuous effort applied to all things, and that does tend to be an uncomfortable thing; there is a certain peace in simple belief, and intellectual engagement necessarily involves questioning assumptions and testing their validity,* and that destroys the comfort of acceptance, at least in the short term. While I'll not go so far as to say that the work of the mind in such things is as tiring as is the work of the body in the day-to-day tasks involved in preserving the material aspects of American culture (digging ditches is hard, dammit), it is taxing, and it is hard to blame those who spend their days engaged in labor for not spending their free time working at a different difficult task.
It certainly can be done, but it is just as certainly considerably demanding.
Part of the problem lies, I believe, in the idea that easy is good. It is a natural outgrowth of increasing technology that the necessary amount of work on the part of people tends to decrease; automation of production by using robots in factories is one prominent example, with the immensely increased ability to access information provided by the Internet another. As work becomes less necessary, less is done, which has the effect of making less able to be done; this is analogous to the development of muscle tissue, which loses its strength if it is not regularly exercised. As less becomes doable, more becomes subject to the sour grapes phenomenon (again, why study the old stuff?); because it cannot be done, people tend to salve their own chagrin at demonstrated incapability by labeling that which cannot be done as not worth doing.
That phenomenon, I am sure, contributes to my disdain for a lot of popular performers. I am also sure that it contributes to the devaluing of intellectual achievement in the United States. And I do not know how to fight it.
*As the Good Doctor remarks in "Belief," the very postulates from which any line of reasoning must proceed are themselves articles of faith, so that there is no way to avoid blind acceptance at some level.
I am not fond of Lady Gaga (or the other two--hell, I'm not even sure who "Snooki" is). And I do think that Herbert's comment that the United States "often holds intellectual achievement in contempt" is fairly accurate, as I think I have discussed (here, here, and here, among others). Even so, I find that I have questions about Herbert's article.
One of them regards the very issue of relative standing. He writes that the College Board tells us that the US, "once the world's leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations." Assuming that this is true (and I am not contesting the factual basis), there remains the question of what the percentages are. If the percentage of US young people with college degrees has remained constant, but eleven other countries' percentages rose markedly, that would create the change that Herbert notes without there being any actual drop in the percentage of US students who get their funny little pieces of paper.
I would be interested in seeing the College Board's report for myself.
Another question I have is why Herbert expresses such vitriol towards pop-culture figures as he does. As I note above, I am not terribly fond of the people Herbert references; I think them execrable, in fact, and am greatly annoyed that they are able to make as much money as they do for contributing little. But I am also convinced that they are no worse than the schlock of any previous generation--and there has been quite a bit of it in every time. Much of Milton is nigh-unreadable. Not all of Shakespeare is good. Even Chaucer had bad days. And they are held up as the trifecta of superior English literature.
Given this, can we really be surprised that people like crap?
I do agree with Herbert's general thrust, that the people of the United States as a whole do not adequately intellectually engage with the world around them. I see it repeatedly in every class I teach. In each, there are students who are already engaged, there are others who are willing to engage, but there are always some who simply want to get the credit and move on, doing as little as possible and caring not one whit for what they do. And while I believe that it is too much to expect that all of the students who come into my classroom will have the same love of learning as I do, or the same regard for the subject matter, there are always those who are not even open to the possibility that there is something worthwhile in opening the mind and accepting challenges to it.
The simple truth is that it is not easy to wrestle with concepts and ideas. It is not easy to train the mind to be able to question itself and its assumptions. It requires continuous effort applied to all things, and that does tend to be an uncomfortable thing; there is a certain peace in simple belief, and intellectual engagement necessarily involves questioning assumptions and testing their validity,* and that destroys the comfort of acceptance, at least in the short term. While I'll not go so far as to say that the work of the mind in such things is as tiring as is the work of the body in the day-to-day tasks involved in preserving the material aspects of American culture (digging ditches is hard, dammit), it is taxing, and it is hard to blame those who spend their days engaged in labor for not spending their free time working at a different difficult task.
It certainly can be done, but it is just as certainly considerably demanding.
Part of the problem lies, I believe, in the idea that easy is good. It is a natural outgrowth of increasing technology that the necessary amount of work on the part of people tends to decrease; automation of production by using robots in factories is one prominent example, with the immensely increased ability to access information provided by the Internet another. As work becomes less necessary, less is done, which has the effect of making less able to be done; this is analogous to the development of muscle tissue, which loses its strength if it is not regularly exercised. As less becomes doable, more becomes subject to the sour grapes phenomenon (again, why study the old stuff?); because it cannot be done, people tend to salve their own chagrin at demonstrated incapability by labeling that which cannot be done as not worth doing.
That phenomenon, I am sure, contributes to my disdain for a lot of popular performers. I am also sure that it contributes to the devaluing of intellectual achievement in the United States. And I do not know how to fight it.
*As the Good Doctor remarks in "Belief," the very postulates from which any line of reasoning must proceed are themselves articles of faith, so that there is no way to avoid blind acceptance at some level.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
20100803.0844
Plagiarism has been much on my mind lately, as I think I may have noted. As I have spoken with my colleagues, I have found that many of them are reporting things similar to my experience; students are doing things that we call "cheating" openly and in many cases unabashedly. And that is not a comfortable situation for anyone--instructors are placed in a position to have to confront students, and students are forced either to admit their errors (not a bad thing, but not an easy one for any of us) or contest the instructor's judgment (which, since many of us use Google as well as did the student who cheated, is usually not an easy thing to do).
It was with some interest, then, that I read this article, in which Trip Gabriel discusses the increased incidence of plagiaristic behavior at even the higher levels of undergraduate academia. Perhaps I am something of a romantic, but it seems to me that there is something gravely wrong when top-notch institutions--whose students are supposedly academically socialized to a great extent--suffer from the same sort of rash of cut-and-paste, get-it-done-easily-and-move-on-quickly mentality that is found at other institutions where such a production-based mindset is more expected.
Leaving aside the problems inherent in the idea that there are institutions of higher learning where "getting done" is the accepted method of progress (and the hierarchical academia that idea entails), I cannot help but wonder if the reliance, in papers as well as "creative" works, on "sampling" does not point to some degree of stultification. I well realize that my wondering smacks of curmudgeonly in-my-dayism, that it falls firmly in line with the traditional "kids these days" complaint. But there is something worrying about the idea that the "remix" is an independent creative product.
I admit, though, that I am very much a product of my upbringing and education, both of which have been very much in keeping with the "traditional" American idea of white-middle-class-as-norm.
I admit also that the idea of the remix is an old one. Medieval English literature, for example, is replete with examples of recastings of older stories. Indeed, the focal work of my current research, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, is in most of its text an adaptation of other sources--where it is not an outright copy-over of them (as is pointed out by Vinaver, among others). Chaucer, the veritable parent of English literature, recasts stories in several of his more famous pieces (Troilus and Boece come to mind). And there is the old adage that Shakespeare himself was an inveterate plagiarist (to which I append for my students, "When you write as well as Shakespeare, you, too, may plagiarize. Not an instant before."). Their evidence asserts that copying is not a barrier to artistry, even enduringly high artistic achievement. And it follows that it may not be a barrier to serious academic inquiry.
But.
Even if a number of older, respected artists (and scholars, no doubt) made their way by taking freely from what they found before them, they did more than simply regurgitate it wholesale. Malory, who keeps lines of his sources intact, often writes of "the frenssh booke," and where he fails to, he nonetheless recasts language and events in such a way as to significantly alter the thrust of the stories he relates. Chaucer acts similarly, freshening his re-settings by casting them into different verse-forms. And Shakespeare's contributions are too numerous for me to list.
Who among the samplers, remixers, and plagiarists at work now do so much with what they take up?
Works Cited
~Malory, Thomas. Malory: Complete Works. Ed. Eugène Vinaver. 2nd ed. New York, Oxford UP, 1978. Print.
~Vinaver, Eugène. Introduction. Malory: Complete Works. By Thomas Malory. Ed. Eugène Vinaver. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. v-x. Print.
It was with some interest, then, that I read this article, in which Trip Gabriel discusses the increased incidence of plagiaristic behavior at even the higher levels of undergraduate academia. Perhaps I am something of a romantic, but it seems to me that there is something gravely wrong when top-notch institutions--whose students are supposedly academically socialized to a great extent--suffer from the same sort of rash of cut-and-paste, get-it-done-easily-and-move-on-quickly mentality that is found at other institutions where such a production-based mindset is more expected.
Leaving aside the problems inherent in the idea that there are institutions of higher learning where "getting done" is the accepted method of progress (and the hierarchical academia that idea entails), I cannot help but wonder if the reliance, in papers as well as "creative" works, on "sampling" does not point to some degree of stultification. I well realize that my wondering smacks of curmudgeonly in-my-dayism, that it falls firmly in line with the traditional "kids these days" complaint. But there is something worrying about the idea that the "remix" is an independent creative product.
I admit, though, that I am very much a product of my upbringing and education, both of which have been very much in keeping with the "traditional" American idea of white-middle-class-as-norm.
I admit also that the idea of the remix is an old one. Medieval English literature, for example, is replete with examples of recastings of older stories. Indeed, the focal work of my current research, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, is in most of its text an adaptation of other sources--where it is not an outright copy-over of them (as is pointed out by Vinaver, among others). Chaucer, the veritable parent of English literature, recasts stories in several of his more famous pieces (Troilus and Boece come to mind). And there is the old adage that Shakespeare himself was an inveterate plagiarist (to which I append for my students, "When you write as well as Shakespeare, you, too, may plagiarize. Not an instant before."). Their evidence asserts that copying is not a barrier to artistry, even enduringly high artistic achievement. And it follows that it may not be a barrier to serious academic inquiry.
But.
Even if a number of older, respected artists (and scholars, no doubt) made their way by taking freely from what they found before them, they did more than simply regurgitate it wholesale. Malory, who keeps lines of his sources intact, often writes of "the frenssh booke," and where he fails to, he nonetheless recasts language and events in such a way as to significantly alter the thrust of the stories he relates. Chaucer acts similarly, freshening his re-settings by casting them into different verse-forms. And Shakespeare's contributions are too numerous for me to list.
Who among the samplers, remixers, and plagiarists at work now do so much with what they take up?
Works Cited
~Malory, Thomas. Malory: Complete Works. Ed. Eugène Vinaver. 2nd ed. New York, Oxford UP, 1978. Print.
~Vinaver, Eugène. Introduction. Malory: Complete Works. By Thomas Malory. Ed. Eugène Vinaver. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. v-x. Print.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
20100731.1318
There continues to be hubbub about the WTC-area mosque, as noted here. And I do have something to say to the far-removed people who are complaining about this--many of whom have spoken out feverently in favor of the rights, priority, and authority of local government:
The local government of New York City approved the thing. It is completely and entirely a local issue, and it is being carried out via due process of law (so far as has yet been proven). So, those of you who want to interfere despite that being meddling with local government, butt out. You don't get to cry for national work when the locals disagree with you if you want to cry for local work when the nationals do.
The local government of New York City approved the thing. It is completely and entirely a local issue, and it is being carried out via due process of law (so far as has yet been proven). So, those of you who want to interfere despite that being meddling with local government, butt out. You don't get to cry for national work when the locals disagree with you if you want to cry for local work when the nationals do.
Friday, July 23, 2010
20100723.1026
As I was reading yesterday morning, I came across this article, in which Nicholas D. Kristof argues against another article in which Hanna Rosin articulates the position that manhood, as traditionally defined in Western culture (and elsewhere), is on its way out. Rosin's central point is that the economic upheavals that still wrack the United States and Europe are largely affecting men, and that, coupled with a preponderance of women in higher education and growth sectors of the economy, means that the "typical" role of men as the dominant sex is on its way out. She writes that "It's [the] broad, striving middle class that defines our society. And demographically, we can see with absolute clarity that in the coming decades the middle class will be dominated by women." And, upon reading her article in its entirety, I find it difficult to disagree.
Kristof replies that much of the gain women are currently seeing has "a catch-up quality" and that "Catch-up is easier than forging ahead." Perhaps this is true. It is certainly true that "men have typically benefited as women have gained greater equality."
The dialogue between the articles, though, is telling. Kristof does not refute what Rosin write, though he does qualify it. He does not deny that men are losing out in many regards, though he nuances it and offers different reasons than does Rosin. But he does say that even if and when "we men will find a way to hold our own," it will be "with the help of women"; his argument acknowledges that male development is contingent upon female influence.
And that is true. It very much is. For the great majority of us, our mothers were our first teachers. Most of my other teachers were and are women. And I, at least, do quite a bit with the thought of making my wife happy prominent in my mind.
Unfortunately, as Rosin rightly points out, there are a lot of men in the United States and elsewhere who are thoroughly socialized to not accept much in the way of help, let alone help from women. Leaving aside those who are inveterate, obstinate sexists, leaving aside those who do believe that women are inferior to men, there are a great many who are brought up to believe that they ought, not just as men but as adult human beings, to be providing for themselves and contributing to the maintenance of their families--and they are right to believe this. All of had damned well ought to be doing that very thing whenever we can.
The trouble right now is that it is not quite so possible to do so as it ought to be for a great many people. The reasons for it, I'll not go into at the moment, though they can be easily guessed at (not so much, to quote South Park, that "They took oer jebs" or however it's spelled to be pronounced that way). As a man, one who is in the female-dominated field of academia (and in English, no less, one of the most "feminine" disciplines), I do not know what to say about the issue.
Kristof replies that much of the gain women are currently seeing has "a catch-up quality" and that "Catch-up is easier than forging ahead." Perhaps this is true. It is certainly true that "men have typically benefited as women have gained greater equality."
The dialogue between the articles, though, is telling. Kristof does not refute what Rosin write, though he does qualify it. He does not deny that men are losing out in many regards, though he nuances it and offers different reasons than does Rosin. But he does say that even if and when "we men will find a way to hold our own," it will be "with the help of women"; his argument acknowledges that male development is contingent upon female influence.
And that is true. It very much is. For the great majority of us, our mothers were our first teachers. Most of my other teachers were and are women. And I, at least, do quite a bit with the thought of making my wife happy prominent in my mind.
Unfortunately, as Rosin rightly points out, there are a lot of men in the United States and elsewhere who are thoroughly socialized to not accept much in the way of help, let alone help from women. Leaving aside those who are inveterate, obstinate sexists, leaving aside those who do believe that women are inferior to men, there are a great many who are brought up to believe that they ought, not just as men but as adult human beings, to be providing for themselves and contributing to the maintenance of their families--and they are right to believe this. All of had damned well ought to be doing that very thing whenever we can.
The trouble right now is that it is not quite so possible to do so as it ought to be for a great many people. The reasons for it, I'll not go into at the moment, though they can be easily guessed at (not so much, to quote South Park, that "They took oer jebs" or however it's spelled to be pronounced that way). As a man, one who is in the female-dominated field of academia (and in English, no less, one of the most "feminine" disciplines), I do not know what to say about the issue.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
20100720.2215
As part of the assessment of student learning my school is conducting, I have been directed to have students in my remedial reading classes summarize an article from the New York Times. Being fond of Internet searches and of making things fairly easy for myself, I looked to the online component of that outlet, and because I spend a lot of time looking at peoples' opinions, I plumbed the op-ed section of it for the article.
As it happened, I came up with Stephen Marche's "Byrd and the Bard," posted July 2, 2010, to NYTimes.com. In summary, the article laments the passing of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, with the sadness coming not so much from the loss of his support for policies as from the loss of his command of Shakespeare. Marche notes of Byrd that "he was the greatest Shakespeare-quoter in American political history," displaying an impressive command of the plays attributed to the Swan of Avon.* His ready employment of Shakespearean phrasing, coupled with his reliance on Scripture and the Constitution, marked him as belonging to an older ideal of social and political life. With his passing, the hold of that life upon the prevailing American consciousness is much reduced.
Having not ever been to, much less lived in or been registered to vote in, West Virginia, I am not personally invested in the death of the Senator. But I am very much interested in some of the comments Marche makes in his paean for Byrd. One such comment is that "Quoting Shakespeare is risky as a rhetorical strategy. No American politician today wants to seem too educated."
The idea that there can even be such a thing as "too educated" is abhorrent to me--though that is to be expected, given that I am an educator and continue to pursue my own education. But it does dovetail with some assertions made by John McWhorter in Doing Our Own Thing, namely that there has been an anti-intellectual tendency in the United States (akin to the anti-authoritarian one that is often celebrated) since its inception. And, having been the "brainy" kid in my childhood, I know that the rejection of those who are "too smart" starts early.
My students, when we talked about the article tonight, had comments about the notion (I know because I asked them). One asserted that appearing too intelligent could lead to an increased workload. The ideas behind that are that being smart provokes anger (prompting additional, punitive assignments), suggests that the smart person has leisure (because learning isn't "real work," and those who have time to sit around and read have time to do more work), or implies that the smart person is more capable (a compliment, yes, but a dangerous one). Another student suggested that appearing too educated removes a politician from being able to relate to the ostensible constituency (I am paraphrasing), most of whom belong to lower socio-economic strata and are therefore not likely possessed of higher education--or at least, not higher education in the humanities. Display of higher learning therefore, in that student's assessment, prompts alienation--and that is detrimental to continued political careers.
I am always happy when my students make sense, though I cannot say that I am pleased by the truth of what they say.
Another comment of Marche's with which I have some ado regards Byrd's "deepest anachronism...he believed in a community of language rather than images." I have only tenuous guesses as to what Marche means by the terms he uses--what is a "community of language," really, or the suggested "community of images?" But I am not convinced that we have yet turned wholly away from language. We (for varying values of "we") remain very much text-based, though the nature of what constitutes text is more overtly in flux now than it has been for most of human history. We still speak to one another, if in increasingly short units of meaning. And while we do see much more recently than in the preceding few decades of images--pictures and the like--appearing within what would otherwise be "simple" texts, at no point have we fully turned away from the image as a carrier of meaning and cultural referent. The first printer in the English language, Caxton, printed woodcut illustrations with some of his works, manuscripts from centuries before him are treasured as much for the beauty of their drawings and paintings as for the language and script, and there are ancient forms of writing that are themselves series of pictures; even from the earliest instances of recorded language, the image has been integral to meaning.
I do not think that the two terms are as diametrically opposed as Marche constructs them as being. Nor am I quite convinced that we no longer exist as a community of language--inasmuch as we ever have been "a community" rather than several communities. The clamors for and attempts to legislate English-only policies in the United States, as well as the counter-assertions that people have rights to their own languages, speak to a continued awareness of the influence of language upon identity. So, too, do various native and indigenous language movements.
And thus, Mr. Marche, while I empathize with the loss by West Virginia and the United States Senate of a man who had at his fingertips the words of the Bard, I do not think that that which he represented as such a man is gone away.
*I follow the traditional position that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. I do acknowledge, though, that there is ample debate about the matter. Hence the phrasing.
Addendum
While this article was posted before my above blog post, I do think (now that I've glanced at it) that it addresses some of the concerns brought up.
As it happened, I came up with Stephen Marche's "Byrd and the Bard," posted July 2, 2010, to NYTimes.com. In summary, the article laments the passing of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, with the sadness coming not so much from the loss of his support for policies as from the loss of his command of Shakespeare. Marche notes of Byrd that "he was the greatest Shakespeare-quoter in American political history," displaying an impressive command of the plays attributed to the Swan of Avon.* His ready employment of Shakespearean phrasing, coupled with his reliance on Scripture and the Constitution, marked him as belonging to an older ideal of social and political life. With his passing, the hold of that life upon the prevailing American consciousness is much reduced.
Having not ever been to, much less lived in or been registered to vote in, West Virginia, I am not personally invested in the death of the Senator. But I am very much interested in some of the comments Marche makes in his paean for Byrd. One such comment is that "Quoting Shakespeare is risky as a rhetorical strategy. No American politician today wants to seem too educated."
The idea that there can even be such a thing as "too educated" is abhorrent to me--though that is to be expected, given that I am an educator and continue to pursue my own education. But it does dovetail with some assertions made by John McWhorter in Doing Our Own Thing, namely that there has been an anti-intellectual tendency in the United States (akin to the anti-authoritarian one that is often celebrated) since its inception. And, having been the "brainy" kid in my childhood, I know that the rejection of those who are "too smart" starts early.
My students, when we talked about the article tonight, had comments about the notion (I know because I asked them). One asserted that appearing too intelligent could lead to an increased workload. The ideas behind that are that being smart provokes anger (prompting additional, punitive assignments), suggests that the smart person has leisure (because learning isn't "real work," and those who have time to sit around and read have time to do more work), or implies that the smart person is more capable (a compliment, yes, but a dangerous one). Another student suggested that appearing too educated removes a politician from being able to relate to the ostensible constituency (I am paraphrasing), most of whom belong to lower socio-economic strata and are therefore not likely possessed of higher education--or at least, not higher education in the humanities. Display of higher learning therefore, in that student's assessment, prompts alienation--and that is detrimental to continued political careers.
I am always happy when my students make sense, though I cannot say that I am pleased by the truth of what they say.
Another comment of Marche's with which I have some ado regards Byrd's "deepest anachronism...he believed in a community of language rather than images." I have only tenuous guesses as to what Marche means by the terms he uses--what is a "community of language," really, or the suggested "community of images?" But I am not convinced that we have yet turned wholly away from language. We (for varying values of "we") remain very much text-based, though the nature of what constitutes text is more overtly in flux now than it has been for most of human history. We still speak to one another, if in increasingly short units of meaning. And while we do see much more recently than in the preceding few decades of images--pictures and the like--appearing within what would otherwise be "simple" texts, at no point have we fully turned away from the image as a carrier of meaning and cultural referent. The first printer in the English language, Caxton, printed woodcut illustrations with some of his works, manuscripts from centuries before him are treasured as much for the beauty of their drawings and paintings as for the language and script, and there are ancient forms of writing that are themselves series of pictures; even from the earliest instances of recorded language, the image has been integral to meaning.
I do not think that the two terms are as diametrically opposed as Marche constructs them as being. Nor am I quite convinced that we no longer exist as a community of language--inasmuch as we ever have been "a community" rather than several communities. The clamors for and attempts to legislate English-only policies in the United States, as well as the counter-assertions that people have rights to their own languages, speak to a continued awareness of the influence of language upon identity. So, too, do various native and indigenous language movements.
And thus, Mr. Marche, while I empathize with the loss by West Virginia and the United States Senate of a man who had at his fingertips the words of the Bard, I do not think that that which he represented as such a man is gone away.
*I follow the traditional position that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. I do acknowledge, though, that there is ample debate about the matter. Hence the phrasing.
Addendum
While this article was posted before my above blog post, I do think (now that I've glanced at it) that it addresses some of the concerns brought up.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
20100718.1721
I more or less took today to myself. I've been doing a lot of running around recently, and I figured that I could stand to take a day to rest; I feel like I'll be very well able to get back to work in earnest tomorrow.
One of the things that I do when I rest is read. I'll not restate my love of text (again at the moment), but I do generally find reading to be a pleasant activity. And even when I do run across things that prompt strong responses from me, such as this article, I enjoy the sensation.
As I read Staples's article earlier this afternoon, I found myself more or less in agreement with what he discusses. I have already had several cut-and-paste plagiarists in my writing classes this semester. In most of the cases, the offending students simply did not know that 1) they were supposed cite information that they get from the Internet, and 2) that their assignments needed to be their writing, rather than a collage of source materials formatted neatly (not that most format their papers according to the standards I enforce, but that is a different issue).
Regarding the former, I find that a lot of students simply do not realize that information taken from the Internet requires citation. The typical reaction from a student upon being confronted with the zero that plagiarism receives from me is something like "But it's on the Internet. Doesn't that mean the everybody owns it?" While I do acknowledge that ownership of information is a thorny issue--something that this article, among many others, speaks to--I do not see citation so much as confirming or denying ownership as a mark of respect for the person or people who went to the trouble of assembling the material being employed. This is particularly true in the cases of older works that have passed into the public domain and are "common property"; all of us really do own the work, at least in a legal sense, but we ought to at least pay lip service to the effort that went into constructing that material.
Some of the reasoning behind the latter type of behavior, the cut-and-paste-and-from-sources-only approach to writing for school, is in the academic socialization enforced upon the students in the past. There are in my experience a number of instructors at several academic levels who oblige their students to do nothing in their "research papers" except compile and summarize information. While it is very much true that being able to find and condense information is a valuable skill in the academy and outside it, the development of knowledge depends on more than simply grabbing data and putting it together. At the very least, it requires looking at the data and extrapolating from it; unless at least that minimal step is taken, all that is being accomplished is rote recitation--a task at which almost any contemporary computer vastly exceeds almost any human.
That I say so does not mean that I am against the computer or its use in scholastic research--indeed, I am very much for both. But I do not believe that the machine or its employment ought to stand in the place of identifying an idea and explicating both the information that gives rise to it and the process by which said information does so. I am not at all certain that it can.
I am also not at all certain that Staples's final call for the preservation of "the methods through which education at its best teaches people to think critically and originally" can be adequately answered. Rather, I think that new methods for doing so need to be developed. And there is already quite a bit of work--some of it quite good--being done in classrooms throughout the United States and outside it. There is also, unfortunately but unavoidably, quite a bit of shitty work being done in that regard.
The task before us, then, is to identify and expand upon those methods which are successful and valid, looking into why they are successful and why the others are not.
Addenda
July 22, 2010
I caught a flagrant plagiarist yesterday; the student's entire paper, down to the line-breaks, had been cut-and-pasted from one of four websites. One of those websites, evidently, is Cheathouse.com. Pretty obvious, really...
July 23,2010
I just spent a couple of hours grading papers, though for a different class. Three more students plagiarized. I understand that the end of the term is at hand, but I have spoken with their class at great length about the need for citation--as well as for doing one's own work, since cut-and-paste or copy-over jobs like those I caught today are not exactly the same as missing a citation.
One of the things that I do when I rest is read. I'll not restate my love of text (again at the moment), but I do generally find reading to be a pleasant activity. And even when I do run across things that prompt strong responses from me, such as this article, I enjoy the sensation.
As I read Staples's article earlier this afternoon, I found myself more or less in agreement with what he discusses. I have already had several cut-and-paste plagiarists in my writing classes this semester. In most of the cases, the offending students simply did not know that 1) they were supposed cite information that they get from the Internet, and 2) that their assignments needed to be their writing, rather than a collage of source materials formatted neatly (not that most format their papers according to the standards I enforce, but that is a different issue).
Regarding the former, I find that a lot of students simply do not realize that information taken from the Internet requires citation. The typical reaction from a student upon being confronted with the zero that plagiarism receives from me is something like "But it's on the Internet. Doesn't that mean the everybody owns it?" While I do acknowledge that ownership of information is a thorny issue--something that this article, among many others, speaks to--I do not see citation so much as confirming or denying ownership as a mark of respect for the person or people who went to the trouble of assembling the material being employed. This is particularly true in the cases of older works that have passed into the public domain and are "common property"; all of us really do own the work, at least in a legal sense, but we ought to at least pay lip service to the effort that went into constructing that material.
Some of the reasoning behind the latter type of behavior, the cut-and-paste-and-from-sources-only approach to writing for school, is in the academic socialization enforced upon the students in the past. There are in my experience a number of instructors at several academic levels who oblige their students to do nothing in their "research papers" except compile and summarize information. While it is very much true that being able to find and condense information is a valuable skill in the academy and outside it, the development of knowledge depends on more than simply grabbing data and putting it together. At the very least, it requires looking at the data and extrapolating from it; unless at least that minimal step is taken, all that is being accomplished is rote recitation--a task at which almost any contemporary computer vastly exceeds almost any human.
That I say so does not mean that I am against the computer or its use in scholastic research--indeed, I am very much for both. But I do not believe that the machine or its employment ought to stand in the place of identifying an idea and explicating both the information that gives rise to it and the process by which said information does so. I am not at all certain that it can.
I am also not at all certain that Staples's final call for the preservation of "the methods through which education at its best teaches people to think critically and originally" can be adequately answered. Rather, I think that new methods for doing so need to be developed. And there is already quite a bit of work--some of it quite good--being done in classrooms throughout the United States and outside it. There is also, unfortunately but unavoidably, quite a bit of shitty work being done in that regard.
The task before us, then, is to identify and expand upon those methods which are successful and valid, looking into why they are successful and why the others are not.
Addenda
July 22, 2010
I caught a flagrant plagiarist yesterday; the student's entire paper, down to the line-breaks, had been cut-and-pasted from one of four websites. One of those websites, evidently, is Cheathouse.com. Pretty obvious, really...
July 23,2010
I just spent a couple of hours grading papers, though for a different class. Three more students plagiarized. I understand that the end of the term is at hand, but I have spoken with their class at great length about the need for citation--as well as for doing one's own work, since cut-and-paste or copy-over jobs like those I caught today are not exactly the same as missing a citation.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
20100715.2039
The amount of time I put into text--into reading it and into making it--is really more than sufficient. I know that it exceeds far the amount of time invested in text by any layperson, and that is as it should be, given that I seek to do text as a vocation.
I spend, as should be obvious, a fair bit of time considering my engagement with text--and that, too, is as it should be. Not reflecting on one's work is a sure path to error in that work.
I try, though without the degree of success I should like, to avoid error.
But as I consider the work I do, I encounter some thorny issues. One of them is the idea (which does exist among the greater body of my colleagues) that understanding a work of art--whatever the medium--is possible only for the trained critic.
In this attitude, my discipline betrays its origins among the monastic orders. It is similar, this attitude, to the notion that one can only know God by way of a dedicated priesthood.
I betray my Protestantism in saying that I find the notion objectionable.
There is nothing necessarily better about a critical understanding of a given piece of creative work than an untutored, intuitive one. And any who are willing to invest the effort into doing so can come to have a meaningful relationship with creative works or literature or art or anything else.
But.
Just as it is true that Protestant churches have clergy even though their doctrines call for each congregant to form a deep, abiding, individual relationship with the Most High, it is to the advantage of people to look to those who do give their lives over to the study of the creative or whatever for guidance in understanding it. For as with Protestant clergy, there are insights available to the dedicate scholar that are not so much so to the layperson.
This is only to be expected. In the so-called "practical" or "applied" arts, it is fully anticipated that a long-time practitioner will surpass in understanding the novice. Similarly, in the martial arts, one's senior students are expected to understand more than are junior students. But it must also be acknowledged that a beginning artisan can create a masterwork, and that an untutored, inexperienced brawler can lay low an old master.
Training does not create an exemption from error, just as its lack does not deny the possibility of either meaningful engagement or success. But as a rule, one who has labored long and trained intensely can be expected to contribute in a way that reflects the training, a way typically not expected from or provided by the inexperienced.
It is in the twin hopes of making such contributions and of being able to share them with others that I pursue this course of action, my years-long study of the written word.
I spend, as should be obvious, a fair bit of time considering my engagement with text--and that, too, is as it should be. Not reflecting on one's work is a sure path to error in that work.
I try, though without the degree of success I should like, to avoid error.
But as I consider the work I do, I encounter some thorny issues. One of them is the idea (which does exist among the greater body of my colleagues) that understanding a work of art--whatever the medium--is possible only for the trained critic.
In this attitude, my discipline betrays its origins among the monastic orders. It is similar, this attitude, to the notion that one can only know God by way of a dedicated priesthood.
I betray my Protestantism in saying that I find the notion objectionable.
There is nothing necessarily better about a critical understanding of a given piece of creative work than an untutored, intuitive one. And any who are willing to invest the effort into doing so can come to have a meaningful relationship with creative works or literature or art or anything else.
But.
Just as it is true that Protestant churches have clergy even though their doctrines call for each congregant to form a deep, abiding, individual relationship with the Most High, it is to the advantage of people to look to those who do give their lives over to the study of the creative or whatever for guidance in understanding it. For as with Protestant clergy, there are insights available to the dedicate scholar that are not so much so to the layperson.
This is only to be expected. In the so-called "practical" or "applied" arts, it is fully anticipated that a long-time practitioner will surpass in understanding the novice. Similarly, in the martial arts, one's senior students are expected to understand more than are junior students. But it must also be acknowledged that a beginning artisan can create a masterwork, and that an untutored, inexperienced brawler can lay low an old master.
Training does not create an exemption from error, just as its lack does not deny the possibility of either meaningful engagement or success. But as a rule, one who has labored long and trained intensely can be expected to contribute in a way that reflects the training, a way typically not expected from or provided by the inexperienced.
It is in the twin hopes of making such contributions and of being able to share them with others that I pursue this course of action, my years-long study of the written word.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
20100710.1435
There are times when, upon looking at various news reports and comments made about them, I feel great sadness at the state of humanity. I do realize that the anonymity of Internet postings makes it "safer" for people to vent spleen, to make incendiary comments that, were they more directly associated with their words, they would not voice. I also realize that this is a tendency, not an absolute, and that there are a number of exceptions; many people who post under handles remain as respectful and pleasant as they are face-to-face (or are even more so), while others (myself included) work more or less with the same level of vitriol without regard to medium.
And I have posted my name to this blog (by which I mean Ravings with a Dash of Lucid Prose on Blogger, for those who read my comments in re-post).
I am hardly alone in decrying trolling and various other forms of rudeness (hypocritically, I know, in my case, as many who know me will continue to happily attest); Lynne Truss is one of the more widely-known examples, I think. But it is not really a recent phenomenon. The distinction is that people tend to be more overt in their rudeness now--there is less incentive to be subtle.
In some ways, this is without doubt a reflection of protected free speech (for those who have it). One of the primary justifications for protecting speech is that advancement depends upon the generation of new ideas, some of which may be considered execrable when initially voiced but which prove to be more accurate than orthodox views in place at the time of initial voicing. Astronomical models provide some of the more telling historical examples of such advancements.
The problem--if it is actually a problem--with that is that to find new good ideas necessarily means working on many ideas, and not all of them will be good ones. It is an unavoidable thing, then, that bad ideas will get voiced, even by people who otherwise tend to put forward good ones.
(I am not certain whether or not to include myself in that category. Thus, I probably ought not to. But many of you are aware of that already.)
One thing that wider access to the Internet has permitted is an increase of the ability for people to find ideas and to give voice to their own (or, more frequently, parrotings of others' ideas). And that does have the great benefit of putting more good ideas in positions where more people can latch onto them. But it does the same for bad ideas, and there are a lot more bad ideas than good--however either "good" or "bad" is defined.
Definition is problematic. Often, definitions are received items, deposited (despite Freire's injunctions against that process) and not reflected upon. Too rarely do we look at what we believe a thing is and means and consider why we do so. It is easy to simply accept what we "already know" or what is simply told to us, and while it is admittedly true that there are many circumstances in which we should do so (because none of us has enough knowledge in ourselves to be able to carry out fruitful investigations of all truths), we allow ourselves to do so even beyond when it is reasonable to do so.
Hell, most of us don't even know when it is reasonable and when it isn't. And that strikes me as being a large problem.
And I have posted my name to this blog (by which I mean Ravings with a Dash of Lucid Prose on Blogger, for those who read my comments in re-post).
I am hardly alone in decrying trolling and various other forms of rudeness (hypocritically, I know, in my case, as many who know me will continue to happily attest); Lynne Truss is one of the more widely-known examples, I think. But it is not really a recent phenomenon. The distinction is that people tend to be more overt in their rudeness now--there is less incentive to be subtle.
In some ways, this is without doubt a reflection of protected free speech (for those who have it). One of the primary justifications for protecting speech is that advancement depends upon the generation of new ideas, some of which may be considered execrable when initially voiced but which prove to be more accurate than orthodox views in place at the time of initial voicing. Astronomical models provide some of the more telling historical examples of such advancements.
The problem--if it is actually a problem--with that is that to find new good ideas necessarily means working on many ideas, and not all of them will be good ones. It is an unavoidable thing, then, that bad ideas will get voiced, even by people who otherwise tend to put forward good ones.
(I am not certain whether or not to include myself in that category. Thus, I probably ought not to. But many of you are aware of that already.)
One thing that wider access to the Internet has permitted is an increase of the ability for people to find ideas and to give voice to their own (or, more frequently, parrotings of others' ideas). And that does have the great benefit of putting more good ideas in positions where more people can latch onto them. But it does the same for bad ideas, and there are a lot more bad ideas than good--however either "good" or "bad" is defined.
Definition is problematic. Often, definitions are received items, deposited (despite Freire's injunctions against that process) and not reflected upon. Too rarely do we look at what we believe a thing is and means and consider why we do so. It is easy to simply accept what we "already know" or what is simply told to us, and while it is admittedly true that there are many circumstances in which we should do so (because none of us has enough knowledge in ourselves to be able to carry out fruitful investigations of all truths), we allow ourselves to do so even beyond when it is reasonable to do so.
Hell, most of us don't even know when it is reasonable and when it isn't. And that strikes me as being a large problem.
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