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In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

theatlantic.com

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Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#61

Post by MaysonL »

pi3832 wrote: post #39
weiser wrote: post #16

I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on and probably does not know about. Maybe if we start from the premise that most individuals have something they are really good at, we might be able to move beyond the educational system of As and Fs and take advantage of people's abilities to the fullest.

>I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on and probably does not know about. Hah. That women may very well be average at a lot of things, and bad at the rest. This idea that "everyone has a special gift!" is just pixie-dust dreaming. Most people simply aren't special, in any sense of the word. Fight Club: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millio…

I would reply that almost everybody is capable of becoming very good at many things. Unfortunately, we are often taught the opposite. Of course, becoming very good at something requires persistent effort, extended over years of focussed practice.

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#62

Post by mechanical_fish »

neilk wrote: post #48
marvin wrote: post #32

This is a very interesting story. What I'm left with is the question of 'who are these people, really'? Is there really a considerable portion of American (or we could say Western) society that is practically illiterate? This seems counter-intuitive to me, I thought it was hardly possible to function at all without a basic understanding of the written word. If these people are out there, I have certainly never had an…

Is there really a considerable portion of American (or we could say Western) society that is practically illiterate? Yes. 21-23%. Or, higher, depending on how you count. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy I thought it was hardly possible to function at all without a basic understanding of the written word. Correct again. The wikipedia article notes the high correlation of illiteracy to delinquency and…

Yep. And if that illiterate foreman was suddenly required to pass a college English 101 class in order to keep his job... the world would lose a perfectly good foreman.

For some reason your story reminded me of Captain Bill Eddy, television pioneer of the 1930s and 40s. Here he is in his own words (from one of my favorite books: The Box: An Oral History of Television 1920 - 1961):

"I started losing my hearing as a kid and was deaf when I entered the Navy, but I had learned to read lips, so every time they put me through the audio tests, they said I had perfect hearing. With the great knowledge of the Navy I was assigned to be sound officer on the submarine. I couldn't hear the signals coming from the enemy submarines, so I went to Kresge's department store and bought some parts and devised an amplifier where the sound signals came out as a movement on a dial. By looking at the dial, I knew if we were on target for an enemy ship and could fire a torpedo. It worked very well, and our submarine was the only one that was scoring hits. Soon, so many people had these amplifiers and were scoring hits that the Navy Department heard about it, and they asked me to develop a model of this amplifier using the finest parts. I put it together and it didn't work. In desperation, I went out to Kresge's and bought these cheap tubes and transformers and put together the Eddy Amplifier and it worked. It became a very interesting patent because it only worked with Kresge parts. That's how I got into electronics."

"In 1934 the Navy finally tripped me up by changing to an electronic system of measuring hearing. I was sent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for retirement."

Fortunately, the Navy's loss was Philo Farnsworth's gain...

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#63

Post by maxharris »

jraines wrote: post #31
orib wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with dissecting a book is that -- just like dissecting an animal -- at the end of the exercise, the subject of the dissection is dead. While mulling over a good book and discussing it can be enjoyable, the attempt to squeeze deep meaning out of something that the author put in by chance simply kills the joy of a good book. Besides, I find that often the books that tend to be chosen for literature classes…

I wholeheartedly disagree. I know literary criticism is about as popular as Windows ME here, but reading good examples of it can be as enjoyable as the text itself(1). Of course there's always the question of how much authority the critic has -- but it's kind of like having someone with a lot of expertise explain the Linux kernal to you, even if it's not Linus. To your last point -- I feel bad for you if those are th…

it's called the Linux /kernel/

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#64

Post by [deleted] »

weebob wrote: post #44
hugh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what these colleges should be doing, if they're taking student's money. Oh, and also... if you're going to be claiming to be an English lecturer and complaining about illiteracy, you should probably master the rules of apostrophe placement first.

Two contractions and one possessive; what's your problem?

[deleted]

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#65

Post by maxharris »

te_platt wrote: post #21

It is interesting how the author is so cautious about saying "College is not for everyone". Maybe we hear "It should be hard to get a college education - especially if you are poor". I'm a big believer in getting all the education you can. That is not the same thing as believing you should get as many college degrees as possible. There comes a point when it is time to get out and do something with your life. For some…

Colleges should do whatever they can to reverse the trend of declining academic standards, or they will lose the money and prestige they presently have and command. Those running the schools may feel otherwise, but the outside world is pretty objective (if you can't hack it at your job, you're fired.)

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#66

Post by william42 »

pi3832 wrote: post #39
weiser wrote: post #16

I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on and probably does not know about. Maybe if we start from the premise that most individuals have something they are really good at, we might be able to move beyond the educational system of As and Fs and take advantage of people's abilities to the fullest.

>I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on and probably does not know about. Hah. That women may very well be average at a lot of things, and bad at the rest. This idea that "everyone has a special gift!" is just pixie-dust dreaming. Most people simply aren't special, in any sense of the word. Fight Club: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millio…

There's still comparative advantage.

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#67

Post by maw »

neilk wrote: post #49
hugh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really a considerable portion of American (or we could say Western) society that is practically illiterate? This seems counter-intuitive to me, I thought it was hardly possible to function at all without a basic understanding of the written word. If these people are out there, I have certainly never had any deep face-to-face conversation with them. Try reading the comments on youtube. I'd expect even a car m…

One thing to remember about Youtube commenters; many of them are not English speakers. Compared to my Filipino or Mandarin, their English is pretty good. But if you want to criticize what they're saying , that's a bit different.

I can read the comments on videos in Spanish, and let me tell you: they're not pretty. I expect readers of other languages would say the same.

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#68

Post by william42 »

daveambrose wrote: post #5

"America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns." We tend…

The solution is to stop showing college as a pinnacle. While "everyone has a special gift" is a bit simplistic, the theory of comparative advantage still holds, and more people need to realize that.

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#69

Post by michaelneale »

jbenz wrote: post #28
maximilian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be such a simple thing for me and judging by Ms. L's plight, it could make all the difference in the world to some people. SIMPLE!!!??? You clearly didn't teach your parents to use computers. Teaching people how to use computers is one of the more challenging and frustrating things I have yet to do. Besides perhaps math, computers baffle more adults than anything I can imagine. I used to have 2 hours phone c…

My Mom always wants the screen to "return to the way it was". Me: You mean the desktop? Mom: I don't know. The way it was. Me: Is it this? (shows her the desktop) Mom: No. It was all black. Me: You mean off? (shuts computer down) Mom: Yes. Thank you. My Mom's a preschool teacher, and I will rely heavily on her wisdom when I have kids, seeing as I don't know jack about 3 year olds. Me in 7 years: Mom, my kid won't eat…

Having kids myself, yes I can relate to that.

I complain to my folks about what I see as major character problems in my little one, only to have my parents smile knowingly (I think they think its justice of some sort). The mention something about that being "familiar" behavior they saw once upon a time ;)

Re: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

#70

Post by jimbokun »

davidw wrote: post #22
orib wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with dissecting a book is that -- just like dissecting an animal -- at the end of the exercise, the subject of the dissection is dead. While mulling over a good book and discussing it can be enjoyable, the attempt to squeeze deep meaning out of something that the author put in by chance simply kills the joy of a good book. Besides, I find that often the books that tend to be chosen for literature classes…

My favorite 'English' class in high school was a journalism class, which was centered around learning to write well and communicate something effectively, with none of the BS about "hidden symbolism". I proudly got a D on an English paper once, when the topic was "how does the symbolism help us understand what the author is telling us", where I answered that it didn't help in the slightest, and that, truth be told, i…

"I proudly got a D on an English paper once, when the topic was "how does the symbolism help us understand what the author is telling us", where I answered that it didn't help in the slightest,"

I think I've already used this story once on HN, but what the heck.

The assignment was to address Orientalism in Antony and Cleopatra. I pointed out several instances of Orientalism in Antony and Cleopatra, then as a conclusion, said that I actually didn't think there was really any Orientalism in Antony and Cleopatra at all, but "found" some to fulfill the assignment.

When I got my paper back, it had positive remarks in the margins, until the remark at the end saying "Jim, we need to talk about this."

I got an A in that class.

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