Belated response Re: coping mechanisms
Richard Eney
Kate Gladstone <handwrit...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> We learn coping mechanisms.
>>
>> My father taught me in second grade that I didn't have to
>> believe what the teacher said, I only had to learn it long
>> enough to regurgitate it on the test. I needed that lesson
>> because I had a teacher that pushed her opinions as dogma.
>> It's been a very helpful lesson.
>
>My parents urged learning the same lesson (of lying on
>demand when authority required),
I didn't consider it lying per se; I considered it telling
the annoying person what they demanded to hear, and
remembered it simply as "this is what X believes".
It went into the same mental-emotional category as being
polite to people I didn't like, or remembering the events
in a fantasy. Lewis Carroll wrote that the playing cards
turned into leaves, and that teacher said certain things
that were equally untrue. People could discuss _Alice_
in terms that sounded absolute ("Alice went down the rabbit
hole"), and in the same spirit I could write the teacher's
"fantasy teachings" as if they were absolute while being
fully aware that they weren't in any way true.
>but they eventually agreed with my observation/complaint/
>demonstration that at least throughout my childhood/teen
>years in order to do this I had either to:
> /a/ actually *convince* myself to really believe
>the falsehood I had to say or write
> (which made it hard for me and others to "un-convince"
>myself later)
> or /b/ thoroughly (if perhaps temporarily) convincing
>myself that truthfulness no longer mattered for any purpose
>whatsoever.
In my case, nobody else ever saw the written tests anyway, and
since she already believed and insisted on what she demanded
I write, I felt that it wasn't lying any more than any pretend
game was lying. What my father gave me was _permission
not to believe it_. So I didn't have to believe it, I only
had to learn it as "what the test would require".
It's not much different from someone who knows some advanced
physics having to put the "simplified" version on an exam
in a basic course that is a prerequisite for the really
advanced course he ought to be taking.
I suppose that says something about how little I cared
about the topic, too. The material taught in second grade
is rarely the stuff of fierce battles for the truth.
=Tamar
Kate Gladstone
> I didn't consider it lying per se; I considered it telling
> the annoying person what they demanded to hear, and
> remembered it simply as "this is what X believes".
> It went into the same mental-emotional category as being
> polite to people I didn't like, or remembering the events
> in a fantasy. Lewis Carroll wrote that the playing cards
> turned into leaves, and that teacher said certain things
> that were equally untrue. People could discuss _Alice_
> in terms that sounded absolute ("Alice went down the rabbit
> hole"), and in the same spirit I could write the teacher's
> "fantasy teachings" as if they were absolute while being
> fully aware that they weren't in any way true.
Doing this, or attempting it, made me physically ill unless I actually
convinced myself on every level that the wrong answer *was* the right
one — just as I would have felt physically ill over the ALICE books if
I had had to study them in a British-history classroom as literally
true news-reports from 19th-century England, with a teacher who
deducted points from even the most accurately "regurgitating" student
if the teacher ever suspected that student of also having had any
exposure to the actual facts in addition to knowing the fantasy.
> In my case, nobody else ever saw the written tests anyway,
In my case, my parents (as well as, sometimes, school administrators)
saw the written tests, quizzes, and homework. On at least some
occasions, when my parents learned that I had put down accurate info
and gotten poor grades for it, they accused me of having failed to
write the factually correct answer "persuasively enough" to make it
acceptable to a teacher who preferred an error. At that point, my
parents counseled me (much as Tamar would) to simply "pretend that the
wrong answer is the right one" ... when they and I discovered that (as
discussed above) I could not do this and remain physically healthy
except by going delusional on the points tested, they punished me
severely for this fact as well (for "lacking flexibility" or some
such).
If you had found that happening to you, Tamar or Gary or anyone here
(at any age), what would you have done?
Re:
> It's not much different from someone who knows some advanced
> physics having to put the "simplified" version on an exam
> in a basic course that is a prerequisite for the really
> advanced course he ought to be taking.
I found myself in exactly that circumstance once or twice (although
not with physics courses) — e.g., in second grade when using a semi-
colon. (The teacher publicly admitted that I had used it correctly,
admitted that she would have definitely used a semi-colon if writing
what I'd written, but stated that I had "been wrong to know about semi-
colons at all, because they are only a punctuation mark in fifth grade
and up. For second graders, they do not exist," so she marked that
sentence as a run-on sentence (which removed some large number of
points from my grade) using a "non-existent punctuation mark" (which
removed an additional large number of points). If she had said ahead
of time "Don't use semi-colons in this room, because I'm not allowed
to give second-graders good marks for sentences that use semi-colons,"
I could have gone along with this (however silly I found it) ... but
the way she did it (after the fact, and evaluating as "non-
existent" [and as wrong] something that she admitted I'd done
correctly and that she would have done the same way) seemed — and
still seems — like cheating: particularly because neither she nor
other teachers would ever make plain in advance exactly what I'd have
to avoid to create a properly "simplified" version of whatever might
come up on an exam. E.g., how could I have known ahead of time, in
second-grade math with the same teacher, that for credit I should have
"answered" a particular sums-of-money problem with the statement "this
cannot be answered" instead of answering it with the statement that
"Joe is in debt five dollars" because the concept of "being in debt"/
negative numbers wouldn't enter the curriculum for a year or two at
least?)
Re:
> The material taught in second grade
> is rarely the stuff of fierce battles for the truth.
That depends on where you attended second grade.
Things my second-grade teacher fiercely battled for, besides the non-
existence or unacceptability of semi-colons, debt, and negative
numbers,
- the non-existence of italic font and bold font
(a classmate got in really bad trouble for asking the
significance of the "fat letters and slanty letters" he'd observed
here and there in textbooks and elsewhere. Once the teacher understood
his question, she replied that "there are no such things. If you think
some letters are fat or slanty, you need to have your eyes checked or
you are just not looking hard enough)
- the non-existence of polytheist religions
(although one of the kids in class had a cousin growing up
Hindu)
- the non-existence of religious persecutions, throughout
history, against members of any religion except the one which funded
the school
- the non-existence of flying mammals (according to at least one
of my teachers, bats were reptiles and flying squirrels were birds:
never mind that both of them fit the correct definition of "mammal"
which we also had to learn, repeat, and apply on Question #1 of the
same exam that required misclassifying a bat for Question #4 and
misclassifying a flying squirrel for Question #5 — after Questions #2
and #3 had asked us to correctly define "reptile" and "bird").
?!?!?!?!?!
Kate Gladstone — http://www.learn.to/handwrite
Kate Gladstone
> This discussion reminded me of a class (it was probably eighth grade in
> an old-style 8/4 school system) in which there was a question about the
> "XYZ Affair" in US history. In answering, I mentioned that X, Y, and Z
> were agents of the French government, which is both true and central to
> understanding what happened. ...
Several of my schoolteachers never even got as far as mentioning
ANYthing about the historical events we had to (allegedly) "learn
about." For those teachers, history consisted of reciting (or giving
on examinations) dates with never-explained names or phrases:
"1066 was William the Conqueror,"
"1474 was the Treaty of Utrecht,"
"1797 was the XYZ Affair"),
end of story ...
In other words: in these classrooms, mentioning (or even ASKING
about) anything other than the bare memorizable date and personal name
(or date and event-name) ...
> wasn't part of the litany ...
and got zero credit (if the teacher felt in a good mood), or more
often negative credit (particularly ironic because one of the teachers
dishing out those negative credits professed not to believe in
negative numbers ... I always wondered what would happen if, one day,
some student erred on SO many memorizations that this teacher *had* to
assign a "non-existent" score below zero, but I did my best not to
test that possibility myself ... )
Kate Gladstone — http://www.learn.to/handwrite
D.J.
<handwrit...@gmail.com> wrote:
]Several of my schoolteachers never even got as far as mentioning
]ANYthing about the historical events we had to (allegedly) "learn
]about." For those teachers, history consisted of reciting (or giving
]on examinations) dates with never-explained names or phrases:
]
] "1066 was William the Conqueror,"
] "1474 was the Treaty of Utrecht,"
] "1797 was the XYZ Affair"),
I could have dealt with that. One of our high school history
teachers made all of us memorize, then stand up in front of class
and recite, the Gettysburg Address. It was, iirc, to make us
understand or appreciate history better. It was An Important
Speech. I guess it was better than learning something by Ceasar
in Latin.
Of course, it turned me off learning history for the rest of that
year. Good thing my other high school history teachers had better
teaching skills.
JimP.
--
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://www.drivein-jim.net/blog/ Mar 29, 2008: Drive-In movie theatres
http://poetry.drivein-jim.net/ poetry blog Apr 1, 2008
http://crestar.drivein-jim.net/newblog/ AD&D blog AD&D Apr 26, 2008
Kate Gladstone
> ] ... history consisted of reciting (or giving
> ]on examinations) dates with never-explained names or phrases:
> ]
> ] "1066 was William the Conqueror,"
> ] "1474 was the Treaty of Utrecht,"
> ] "1797 was the XYZ Affair"),
>
> I could have dealt with that.
I could have, too, IF it had not accompanied a ban on wanting to know
any more about (e.g.) William the Conqueror than his unexplained
association with the number 1066. (Knowing *what* William conquered —
knowing that in 1066 he invaded and conquered England, for instance —
amounted to a wrong answer: 1066 "was" William, 1474 "was" Utrecht,
1797 "was" XYZ, "because there is nothing more to know about any of
these" [direct quote from one teacher].)
Kate Gladstone — http://www.learn.to/handwrite
John in detroit
Kate Gladstone quoted Tamar Who Wrote writes:
>
>> I didn't consider it lying per se; I considered it telling
>> the annoying person what they demanded to hear, and
>> remembered it simply as "this is what X believes".
>> It went into the same mental-emotional category as being
>> polite to people I didn't like, or remembering the events
>> in a fantasy. Lewis Carroll wrote that the playing cards
>> turned into leaves, and that teacher said certain things
>> that were equally untrue. People could discuss _Alice_
>> in terms that sounded absolute ("Alice went down the rabbit
>> hole"), and in the same spirit I could write the teacher's
>> "fantasy teachings" as if they were absolute while being
>> fully aware that they weren't in any way true.
The problem is when people portray "Fantasy" as truth.
In fact: As you may well know, among organized so-called "religion"
there is a strong bias against "Harry Potter" books.
For the longest time I never understood why the backlash,,Finally a
Priest explained it (Writing in a Catholic news letter or magazine I
happened to read) and his explanation made sense... Sort of.
Now: I understand when I pick up a Harry Potter book, Or a Darkover
novel, Or a PERN novel or a (Fill in the science fiction/fantasy series
of your choice) Novel.. I am reading fiction/fantasy. I know this, and
though I may later use that novel, or movie,or TV show to illustrate a
point (If you demean the fictional bad guy he can sue you in fictional
court and I have unlimited fictional funds to pay the settlement With,
Real People, Real Courts, Limited funds (What funds))
I know it's fiction, I present it as fiction, It's understood it's fiction.
The "Churches" are worried that some child might not know the difference
between real and fictional
So...... A teacher who presents fiction as fact... To these same
children who don't understand that a work of fiction is just that,
fiction... Well.. Now you have real problems.
PS. As for the churches stand on H. Potter..... I think it would be
better to explain the difference between truth and fiction than to
prevent the child from having a fantastic reason to learn to read.
I got lucky when it comes to learning reading.. You see. Some one
handed me something that was FUN to read.. So naturally, being a child,
I wanted MORE FUN, which meant MORE READING,, And thus, today, with an
Associates degree under my belt I can read and understand computer
manuals that per the folks who know this kind of stuff requires 20 years
of college, not 2, to understand.
D.J.
<bl...@blank.net> wrote:
]I got lucky when it comes to learning reading.. You see. Some one
The town I grew up in, the library restricted kids to the
children's section until age 6. I, being a shy kid and told not
to wander around the library, went just outside the doorway of
the children's section when I was 6 years old on my weekly
library visit. I found some odd books with space ships on the
spine of the book. Some interesting names there, Asimov,
Heinlein, Andre Norton. I read one, I wanted to check out lots of
them. The librarian called my mother to 'see if it was okay' for
me to read such books. My mother informed the librarian it was
fine, children should be encouraged to read. Wasn't that what a
library was for ? I was only allowed to check out 2 that first
time. The librarian figured it would take me weeks to read those
2, after all, I came from the poor side of town. I read close to
200 of them that summer. The librarian was astounded.
]handed me something that was FUN to read.. So naturally, being a child,
]I wanted MORE FUN, which meant MORE READING,, And thus, today, with an
]Associates degree under my belt I can read and understand computer
]manuals that per the folks who know this kind of stuff requires 20 years
]of college, not 2, to understand.
One of my sisters wound up doing telephone computer tech support
for 2 years, same place I worked for 7. They kept insisting she
had an IT degree. She doesn't.
Most computer things are logical. People who try to pretend
computers and network are 'mysterious and requires a degree and
is vaguely priestly knowledge' fail to realize that. I tell such
twits that no one is born knowning how to fix computers.
Kate Gladstone
> PS. As for the churches stand on H. Potter..... I think it would be
> better to explain the difference between truth and fiction than to
> prevent the child from having a fantastic reason to learn to read.
Unfortunately, some parents don't see it that way. A couple of years
ago, I heard from a homeschooling mom and dad who knew that I
sometimes teach kids to read and do math ... they wanted me to help
their boy learn to read *but* they said that they needed me to do this
in such a way that he would know how to read *only* those things that
his parents considered worth reading.
It turned out, quite literally, that the parents wanted me to find or
create some form of reading instruction which would let him fluently
read anything his parents didn't object to, *BUT* which would somehow
render him instantly and totally unable to decode anything that they'd
rather not have him (or anyone) reading.
Fortunately, I doubt that anyone has yet installed an "on-off"
switch on literacy: once you know how to read "okay" material, you
know how to read the "not-okay" books/web-sites/articles too: I told
the parents so, told them the other reasons that I could not ethically
undertake what they asked, and never heard from them again. For all I
know to the contrary, though, they may actually have FOUND someone who
promised (or who could even deliver?) this *very* scary prospect.
(And I wouldn't put it past certain governments to try creating the
same, if technology allowed.
Why bother banning subversive books or instituting security
clearances if you can just make people physically/mentally unable to
decode — perhaps even physically unable to see — any writing the
government doesn't want them to know about, while still fully able to
read whatever the government doesn't mind them reading? So the
totalitarian government of _______ provides universal and compulsory
brain-implants for six-year-olds "to eliminate problems with reading"
by ensuring they can't read anything problematic ... Feel free to take
this idea and use it for a science-fiction story/song/other work, just
as long as I get an autographed copy.)
;-)
Kate Gladstone — http://www.learn.to/handwrite
Rich Brown
> Why bother banning subversive books or instituting security
> clearances if you can just make people physically/mentally unable to
> government doesn't want them to know about, while still fully able to
> read whatever the government doesn't mind them reading?
I can see the Fnords!
(Google can see them too)
--
Rich Brown -- Song Assassin -- http://freemars.org/filk/
Kate Gladstone
> Kate Gladstone wrote:
> > Why bother banning subversive books or instituting security
> > clearances if you can just make people physically/mentally unable to
> > decode - perhaps even physically unable to see - any writing the
> > government doesn't want them to know about, while still fully able to
> > read whatever the government doesn't mind them reading?
>
> I can see the Fnords!
Robert Anton Wilson's "fnord" concept (conditioning people to lose the
ability to see a certain word which appears in some texts but not in
others) indeed comes close to what I fear someone might really
create ... however:
/1/ a totalitarian government would prefer (and those oddball
homeschooling parents actually *did* want) a method which made words
unreadable when, and ONLY when, they appeared in "disapproved" texts.
E.g., the oddball homeschoolers wanted their kids able to read
absolutely every word of the Bible but absolutely no word of any book
which advocated atheism or non-Christian religions yet literally
thousands of common words that appear in the Bible inevitably also
appear in (say) the works of Richard Dawkins.
(Simple "fnord" programming would not, I think, cover the
difficult question of how to enable a child to read the word "the"
when it appears in one book but not when it appears in another book.)
Similarly, if those homeschoolers (or some high-tech theocracy)
conditioned all their children into permanent inability to see or read
The Seven Words You Can't Say On USA Television Or Radio, this would
leave them permanently unable to see or read various Biblical verses
(e.g., 2 Kings 9:8).
/2/ the method that Wilson outlined in ILLUMINATUS (group hypnosis of
first-graders) seems unlikely to work in reality, because some people
naturally resist hypnosis.
(Or perhaps the first-grade teacher just signals the school
security staff to quietly take out all kids who don't "go under"?)
What, then, would a sufficiently Evil And Powerful Dictator have to do
in order to ensure that all subjects could read every word of the
dictatorship's newspapers, magazines, textbooks, slogans, and other
permitted material (such as machine-operation manuals) but that no
subjects could read any word of anything else (even if the subversive-
and-therefore-unreadable material used exactly the same vocabulary as
the permitted material)?
How could a high-tech "Big Brother" accomplish this — and (more
interestingly), once "Big Brother" HAD accomplished it (by whatever
means), how could subversives (presumably based in another country)
disable the "can't-read-everything" programming/technology?
Kate Gladstone — http://www.learn.to/handwrite
Wes Struebing
wrote:
>On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:56:52 -0700 (PDT), Kate Gladstone
><handwrit...@gmail.com> wrote:
>]Several of my schoolteachers never even got as far as mentioning
>]ANYthing about the historical events we had to (allegedly) "learn
>]about." For those teachers, history consisted of reciting (or giving
>]on examinations) dates with never-explained names or phrases:
>]
>] "1066 was William the Conqueror,"
>] "1474 was the Treaty of Utrecht,"
>] "1797 was the XYZ Affair"),
>
>I could have dealt with that. One of our high school history
>teachers made all of us memorize, then stand up in front of class
>and recite, the Gettysburg Address. It was, iirc, to make us
>understand or appreciate history better. It was An Important
>Speech. I guess it was better than learning something by Ceasar
>in Latin.
>
>Of course, it turned me off learning history for the rest of that
>year. Good thing my other high school history teachers had better
>teaching skills.
>
I didn't care a whole lot for our history classes in high school, but
I OD have to give the teachers I had some real credit. The gave us,
of course, the "Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in 14 hundred and 92",
but got quickly past that, and actually tried to get us to think. It
was, I'm told, unusual - even if it's only later on that events and
perhaps maturity made me appreciate the historical basis of where we
are today.
--
Wes Struebing
Jan. 20, 2009 - the end of an error
Wes Struebing
wrote:
>Kate Gladstone wrote:
>> Why bother banning subversive books or instituting security
>> clearances if you can just make people physically/mentally unable to
>> decode - perhaps even physically unable to see - any writing the
>> government doesn't want them to know about, while still fully able to
>> read whatever the government doesn't mind them reading?
>
>I can see the Fnords!
>
>(Google can see them too)
(I STILL see four fingers!)
Kip Williams
> (I STILL see four fingers!)
Mickey's not through with you yet!
Kip W
John in detroit
> Most computer things are logical. People who try to pretend
> computers and network are 'mysterious and requires a degree and
> is vaguely priestly knowledge' fail to realize that. I tell such
> twits that no one is born knowning how to fix computers.
Kathy Mar says it best "Calm down, It's only ones and zeros"
Your story of discovering the likes of Asimov and Norton, That is a
very good way to learn to read.
The library policy of restricting.... Is bad, but I suspect they figured
that out.
John in detroit
> I entirely agree that:
>
>> PS. As for the churches stand on H. Potter..... I think it would be
>> better to explain the difference between truth and fiction than to
>> prevent the child from having a fantastic reason to learn to read.
>
> Unfortunately, some parents don't see it that way. A couple of years
> ago, I heard from a homeschooling mom and dad who knew that I
> sometimes teach kids to read and do math ... they wanted me to help
> their boy learn to read *but* they said that they needed me to do this
> in such a way that he would know how to read *only* those things that
> his parents considered worth reading.
Yup, Well,,, The parents, of course, influence (or create) the position
of the church (depending on the church) so that too is part of the problem.
There are some books I'd rather a child not read, but fact is, they are
going to read them, sooner or later..(one hopes later) but the truth is
if the child is able to read and understand what he's reading, He (or
She) is more than likely ready to read it.
For more understanding I present a joke
The young man wished to have a friend, who happened to be a young girl
over for a "Sleep over" party (NOTE young really means young) the
parents were trying to figure out how to decide if he was too old to
have a girl over for the night.. Finally his father asked "What's
36,24,36. The young lad thought a while and said Ninty Six.
He got his sleep over.
(He had not yet read THOSE books)
Kathy Sands
except by going delusional on the points tested, they punished me
severely for this fact as well (for "lacking flexibility" or some
such).
If you had found that happening to you, Tamar or Gary or anyone here
(at any age), what would you have done?
Re:
> The material taught in second grade
> is rarely the stuff of fierce battles for the truth.
For me, 2nd grade was such a series of horrors that, after my 2nd day
as a transfer student to a public suburban school from a Catholic city
school, I simply shut down for the rest of the year & was very nearly
failed, just narrowly avoiding a decision to make me repeat by doing
spectacularly on state-imposed placement tests.
The 1st day, my teacher told me to write my name, address & phone # on
a 3X5 card. When I turned it in to her, she announced, in the sort of
tone that is designed to get the attention of the entire class, "What
do you think you're doing here, young lady?" as she shoved the card
back in my hand, along with another blank one.
"I wrote down everything that you asked," was my reply, and I was well
past confused at her question.
"In 2nd grade, we print!"
"Oh, sorry, where I came from, we--"
"Obviously, you aren't 'where you came from', young lady. Here we have
rules, and you WILL follow them!'
By then, I was too tongue-tied to argue with her. Having been raised
as a good Catholic-school girl to unthinkingly assume that the adults
in authority knew best, that I WANTED to argue with her shocked me
into silence. But I remember how angry I was about being expected to
follow rules I'd never been taught.
The next day was library. My class filed in, & I stayed in line for a
few minutes while the librarian had his say (something like we were
expected to check out a book every week, but could have up to 2 at a
time if we wanted). As soon as he finished telling us we could go pick
out our books, I'd figured out the layout & made a beeline for the
600's (Dewey Decimal) bookcases.
I hadn't gone more than a few steps when I was jerked back by a hand
at the back of my collar. "Where do you think you're going, young
lady?"
Stumbling over some words as I tried to explain my latest passion, she
dragged me over to a low, 4-shelf section below the windows. "THESE
are the books 1st and 2nd graders are allowed to read."
Picture books. In my mind at the time, baby books. I didn't think
before I whined, "But I stopped reading those books almost two years
years ago!"
"What did I tell you about rules?" She went on for quite awhile, but
I'd bocked her out & turned her off at that point.
29 years later, when my son was in 2nd grade, in a private school that
used the Calvert School materials (secular private school in Baltimore
City that has a physical school & a home-school program that other
schools & individual families can buy into) for kindergarten thru 4th
grade, he was avidly listening to a discussion comparing the United
States to other countries that eventually focussed on where would be
the best places to live. Well into it, Matthew dived in, asking why
nobody had mentioned South Africa.
Silence for a moment. "Honey, you and your dad and your sister, and
your dad's relatives would get by fine there, but most of your
relatives on your Nana's side of the family would never pass for
white, and South Africa is a pretty wretched place for people who
aren't."
"That isn't what my history book says." So Leo & I went to his history
book. "See? It says that the Cape was an empty land where Europeans
got shipwrecked and made a colony and where the English and the other
people there get along real great and--"
"Damn. Leo, that's pretty much the way it's written here." The
textbook had been copyrighted in 1952, when texts were allowed to get
away with that kind of crap. So we gave our son a bit of some of the
actual history involved, an overview of the Boer Wars & aparteid
(sic?) & that because him being between 1/8 & 1/16th non-white, he'd
be considered 'colored' unless he went before a judge who could
declare him white based on his looking white & the judge's whim. And
that those of us with 1/8 or more were unlikely to have had that
option. And that such total segregation warped the whole culture. And
that even here in the US (well, especially here in the US) we've been
going thru entirely too much of the same.
Anyway, we questioned the headmaster and Matt's teacher at some
length, even tried to get some of the other parents involved in asking
for a revision of the text, BUT NOBODY CARED! The only positive (well,
neutral) thing I can report is that when my daughter was in the same
school & grade, that entire chapter had been edited out. But the one
in the Greek Myth text that went on about how Hera was irrationally
jealous of her husband's 'friendships with young mortal women and
their children' was still intact. So we read all of their texts, then
supplemented and/or contradicted with facts & opinions of our own
flavor.
So, yes, materials, facts & opinions taught in 2nd graded SHOULD be
the stuff of fierce battles, and I hope that such battles aren't as
rare as they once were!
Kathy Sands
Barney Evans
> I could not do this and remain physically healthy
> except by going delusional on the points tested, they punished me
> severely for this fact as well (for "lacking flexibility" or some
> such).
>
> If you had found that happening to you, Tamar or Gary or anyone here
> (at any age), what would you have done?
>
> Re:
>
>> The material taught in second grade
>> is rarely the stuff of fierce battles for the truth.
There is a song by Harry Chapin that would apply here.
http://members.optusnet.com.au/charles57/Creative/Children/chapin.htm
Also there is this book...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me
Barney
--
Jesus is Lord ||| Love Kate ||| Science Fiction |||
Windbourne Sound ||| LCIAWOL ||| Remove the "ick" for replies
||| San Diego Filk is http://www.sdfilk.org
D.J.
<tal...@earthlink.net> wrote:
]Stumbling over some words as I tried to explain my latest passion, she
]dragged me over to a low, 4-shelf section below the windows. "THESE
]are the books 1st and 2nd graders are allowed to read."
I'm familiar with such pretend teachers as well. Along with
distortions in school books pretending to be facts.
Kay Shapero
@cableone.net says...
> On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:56:55 -0700 (PDT), Kathy Sands
> <tal...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> ]Stumbling over some words as I tried to explain my latest passion, she
> ]dragged me over to a low, 4-shelf section below the windows. "THESE
> ]are the books 1st and 2nd graders are allowed to read."
>
> I'm familiar with such pretend teachers as well. Along with
> distortions in school books pretending to be facts.
>
> JimP.
>
hidden in my desk to peruse while supposedly reading C-A-T = cat or some
such. I miss the old LA school system - my opinion of the cuurrent one
would probably set fire to this laptop...
--
Kay Shapero
Signature munged - to email me use kay at domain of my website, below.
http://www.kayshapero.net
Filk FAQ at http://www.kayshapero.net/filkfaq.htm
Wes Struebing
wrote:
>In article <eige145mod676vpt7...@4ax.com>, solosam75
>@cableone.net says...
>> On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:56:55 -0700 (PDT), Kathy Sands
>> <tal...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> ]Stumbling over some words as I tried to explain my latest passion, she
>> ]dragged me over to a low, 4-shelf section below the windows. "THESE
>> ]are the books 1st and 2nd graders are allowed to read."
>>
>> I'm familiar with such pretend teachers as well. Along with
>> distortions in school books pretending to be facts.
>>
>> JimP.
>>
>Praise be, MY teacher didn't say a WORD when I had Alice in Wonderland
>hidden in my desk to peruse while supposedly reading C-A-T = cat or some
>such. I miss the old LA school system - my opinion of the cuurrent one
>would probably set fire to this laptop...
Not me, but our youngest daughter, story. (She started reading before
four years old). When she was in first grade, they did the library
thing, too. Luckily the teacher knew about Amanda (and had seen and
realized her placement scores...), because when the class filed into
the library, Amy did much as you did, Kathy, and the librarian tried
to stop her. Amy's teacher told her in no uncertain terms that "this
child can pick from ANY shelf in the library. You WILL not restrict
her"
Outcome is that later on, one of the best advocates for Amy turned out
to be the librarian.
Richard Eney
Kate Gladstone <handwrit...@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> A couple of years
>ago, I heard from a homeschooling mom and dad who knew that I
>sometimes teach kids to read and do math ... they wanted me to help
>their boy learn to read *but* they said that they needed me to do this
>in such a way that he would know how to read *only* those things that
>his parents considered worth reading.
>
>It turned out, quite literally, that the parents wanted me to find or
>create some form of reading instruction which would let him fluently
>read anything his parents didn't object to, *BUT* which would somehow
>render him instantly and totally unable to decode anything that they'd
>rather not have him (or anyone) reading.
I get the feeling that they didn't know how to read very well themselves.
> Fortunately, I doubt that anyone has yet installed an "on-off"
>switch on literacy: once you know how to read "okay" material, you
>know how to read the "not-okay" books/web-sites/articles too: I told
>the parents so, told them the other reasons that I could not ethically
>undertake what they asked, and never heard from them again. For all I
>know to the contrary, though, they may actually have FOUND someone who
>promised (or who could even deliver?) this *very* scary prospect.
>
>(And I wouldn't put it past certain governments to try creating the
>same, if technology allowed.
> Why bother banning subversive books or instituting security
>clearances if you can just make people physically/mentally unable to
>decode -— perhaps even physically unable to see- — any writing the
>government doesn't want them to know about, while still fully able
>to read whatever the government doesn't mind them reading?
One group already does that.
When I was in college, there was another college girl who was having
trouble with her introduction to philosophy class. I spent a lot of
time hanging around the dormitory being the know-it-all, so she asked
me to help her understand the chapter. It turned out that the problem
was very simple: she had been trained in Roman Catholic beliefs.
The idea that she couldn't work with, _even as a hypothesis_,
was the idea that "Either there was always something, or at one point
there was nothing and then something came into existence." It took
half an hour to get her to understand the basic premise for about
ten seconds - and then the knee-jerk theology came out "But there
was always God". At that point I gave up. I heard later that she
had dropped the course.
She could pronounce most of the words, but there was a mental
barrier that prevented the meaning from entering.
There are lots of such barriers. I have one about car mechanics;
I tried to understand some fairly simple mechanical stuff about
how the transmission works, and I could _feel_ a mental barrier
saying "You aren't supposed to know this."
=Tamar
Richard Eney
Kate Gladstone <handwrit...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Re:
<anti-fnord training>
>
>Robert Anton Wilson's "fnord" concept (conditioning people to lose the
>ability to see a certain word which appears in some texts but not in
>others) indeed comes close to what I fear someone might really
>create ... however:
>What, then, would a sufficiently Evil And Powerful Dictator have to
>do in order to ensure that all subjects could read every word of the
>dictatorship's newspapers, magazines, textbooks, slogans, and other
>permitted material (such as machine-operation manuals) but that no
>subjects could read any word of anything else (even if the subversive-
>and-therefore-unreadable material used exactly the same vocabulary as
>the permitted material)?
> How could a high-tech "Big Brother" accomplish this — and (more
>interestingly), once "Big Brother" HAD accomplished it (by whatever
>means), how could subversives (presumably based in another country)
>disable the "can't-read-everything" programming/technology?
There have been cultures that had separate languages for men and women.
Each group learned the basic words as children, but as adults they
only used the appropriate words for their subgroup and "forgot" many
of the words they used to know.
I had a similar experience with "teenage" words. There's a slang term
in New England - "wicked" meaning "good" - which I used as a teenager.
As an adult I totally forgot about it until I was reminded by my niece
when she was a teenager. I suppose it's similar to forgetting how to
play some childhood games, but it is a context- and condtion-related
word use, slightly similar to the proposal of the idiots you encountered.
=Tamar
John in detroit
> Praise be, MY teacher didn't say a WORD when I had Alice in Wonderland
> hidden in my desk to peruse while supposedly reading C-A-T = cat or some
> such. I miss the old LA school system - my opinion of the cuurrent one
> would probably set fire to this laptop...
Good teacher.. Not just the one in the school.
There are several problems with todays schools.. This is a short list,
it is by no means complete
1: DIWK (Dual income with kids) in my day as a student the traditional
rolls of men and women were Dad brought home the bacon, Mom kept the
house, cooked the meals and made sure the kids did their homework. ONE
income was enough to keep hearth and home together. Now, I'm all for
equal rights and workplace equality. But fact is. Without at least ONE
parent (don't really matter which one) at home many children are not as
"motivated" to learn. I think this is the #1 issue.
2: Television, the electronic "Babysitter" for many of those DIWKs
3: Class size, School I went to the Graduating class was less than 30,
Current Michigan state law limits the number of students in a class
room to 27 for public schools.. (A couple of exceptions like Band and
Orchestera) So schools have created the 2-room suite, 25 (or 27)
students in each room, one teacher, one teacher's aid
4: Student attidute "When I think back on all that CRAP I learned in
high school... It's a wonder I can think at all" (Simon and Garfunkel)
5: Standardized tests, Teaching the test and "No child left behind" (Or
pressed ahead) Most of the kids I started school with graduated a year
BEHIND me. The story goes Einstein flunked 4th grade math. I never
took 4th grade, went from 3rd to 5th. But that was a full generation
before "No child left behind" I left nearly 30 behind. out a class room
of that many plus me.
6: Management, IN many class rooms today if there is a problem child,
The kind of child who in my day spent a lot of time visiting the
principle's office, and the teacher does what teachers have done over
the years then the teacher gets a note from the principle to the effect
of "If you can not handle your class we will get someone who can" In my
day the disruptive student got to "Admire the grain of the wood in the
teacher's desk" (While the teacher attended to the seat of the problem)
There is a lot more.. But these are some of the issues I can identify.
However even in my day a student might well be passed on to the next
grade not because they had earned the privlige but because of other
issues. Before my brother and I were big enough to work the farm my dad
hired a farm hand. This was a high school kid, (Senior) who could not
read "Run Spot Run" level books (My mother taught HIM to read well
enough to get by in the world even as she was teaching myself and my
not-so-little brother (He's 6' 6 1/2" by around 300 pounds now I'm only
6'3") This kid had been promoted in the lower grades cause he was "So
big" and in the higher grades because the one thing he did well was play
football. My brother had the same issues in the lower grades till one
bold teacher suggested holding him back a year.. Then his grades went
way up (He was born in October, Me in Jan, so though we are nearly 2
years apart on age (1 3/4) we started school only one year apart)
Today, of course, if you hold a student back, Send him to the principle
or ask him to "Admire the grain of wood in the desk" that is child many
people will charge you with child abuse. .And we can't have that either.
I'm not sure where we should draw the lines... I'm just sure we are way
over the line at the moment.
John in detroit
> There are lots of such barriers. I have one about car mechanics;
> I tried to understand some fairly simple mechanical stuff about
> how the transmission works, and I could _feel_ a mental barrier
> saying "You aren't supposed to know this."
Well, I won't say I don't have mental barriers... But in another place I
have folks who flame me saying "You can't know all that stuff"
How do I know all that stuff... Well, the barrier I have is
understanding the quoted paragraph.
I do, however, know that many people have such barriers.. I will give
you a real life example.
Currently it's possible to use both the Microwave and Toaster on the
same 15 amp circuit breaker here at home.. Alas, that is about 20 amps
of load on a 15 amp breaker. Wife did so yesterday
I suggested SHE reset the clearly labeled breaker
She does not understand that electrical stuff.
Lee Gold
Mental Barrier: We used to live in Santa Monica and our home got
somewhat brackish tap water (maybe with more sea water in it than
our LA home gets) and once or twice a year the wires that connected
the float to the lever in our toilet would corrode.
Eventually I got tired of this, grabbed Barry's little electrical kit
which had a bunch of wires with different colored plastic coatings,
and told him I was going to snip off a few inches of one of them to
wire the float to its hardware. He said, "You can't do that; that's an
ELECTRICAL wire!"
It actually took me some time to persuade him that it was a
plastic-coated wire usable for conducting electricity but also
usable for other things.
I have since learned that the official name of this problem
is Functional Fixedness.
--Lee
Richard Eney
John in detroit <n...@spam.not> wrote:
<snips>
>2: Television, the electronic "Babysitter" for many of those DIWKs
I agree that the use of TV as a babysitter is a problem; however,
many of the brilliant children in my school system had tv at home.
(I'm still glad we didn't.)
>4: Student attidute "When I think back on all that CRAP I learned in
>high school... It's a wonder I can think at all" (Simon and Garfunkel)
That attitude, carried into teacher training, has led to the kind of
teachers that people are complaining about now.
>6: Management, IN many class rooms today if there is a problem child,
>The kind of child who in my day spent a lot of time visiting the
>principle's office, and the teacher does what teachers have done over
>the years then the teacher gets a note from the principle to the effect
>of "If you can not handle your class we will get someone who can" In my
>day the disruptive student got to "Admire the grain of the wood in the
>teacher's desk" (While the teacher attended to the seat of the problem)
One of the teachers that I had to carefully disbelieve while staying
politely silent was the principal of my grade school. He admitted that
it made no sense but he insisted that "nuclear", while spelled that way,
was pronounced "newcular". I knew better but I also knew better than
to continue to argue.
Later I learned the phrase "to take something under advisement", meaning
essentially, to drop the issue wihtout bothering to try to change someone
whose opinions I disagree with.
=Tamar Lindsay
Kate Gladstone
> > A couple of years
> >ago, I heard from a homeschooling mom and dad who knew that I
> >sometimes teach kids to read and do math ... they wanted me to help
> >their boy learn to read *but* they said that they needed me to do this
> >in such a way that he would know how to read *only* those things that
> >his parents considered worth reading.
>
> >It turned out, quite literally, that the parents wanted me to find or
> >create some form of reading instruction which would let him fluently
> >read anything his parents didn't object to, *BUT* which would somehow
> >render him instantly and totally unable to decode anything that they'd
> >rather not have him (or anyone) reading.
>
Tamar guesses (correctly) that ...
> ... they didn't know how to read very well themselves.
Yes, but (amazingly) they THOUGHT they read excellently. However, they
puzzled over any word longer than two syllables, and even many of the
two-syllable words: they just didn't feel this indicated poor reading
as long as they "got the meaning of it all" ... but, more often than
not, they didn't "get the meaning" even of any sentence or paragraph
simple enough for them to decode right through. (They sort-of-knew
that they had missed something in their repeated attempts to read the
sports page or whatever, but didn't quite grok *what* they'd missed,
or that it might matter, or that "poor reading" might appropriately
name their failure to grok. Strangely, the dad had an M.A and the mom
had a B.A. ... apparently from schools *not* operating purely as post-
office boxes owned by a guy with a rubber stamp and a diploma-printing
program: I've no idea how two semi-literates accomplished that feat,
since I doubt they could read well enough to comprehend even a buy-
your-phony-diploma web-site, let alone to comprehend the course
catalog or syllabi of even a very low-standards legitimate college.)
Kate Gladstone — http://www.learn.to/handwrite
Kate Gladstone
switch for certain types of knowledge) does exist — If not imposed by
an evil dictator, then imposed by social constraints (so that, e.g.,
people become unable to add 10 + 10 in the context of a situation
identified as "electrical stuff" and therefore "not appropriate to
perceive if you lack a Y chromosome" or whatever)
I have seen this, actually, with people who had to read prose which
contradicted something they believed: e.g., in an archeology class
where the professor's handout stated (probably correctly) that "the
ancient Israelites were not at all good neighbors" to the people of
Canaan, one student persistently read-and-understood that phrase as
"the ancient Israelites were good neighbors" and sincerely believed
that he had read the handout accurately. EVERYBODY tried to help ...
but he just couldn't see the words "not at all" in the context of that
sentence. Block out the rest of the sentence, and he read those words
just fine ... uncover the entire sentence, and he read the sentence
*his* way, not even seeing what he'd edited out.
Presumably, some part of him *must* have correctly comprehended the
sentence in order for him to mentally edit it: how else would his
unconscious have known exactly what, and where, to cut?
What would you do, if you had such a student or employee, to
teach him to read and comprehend the inadmissible material without
censoring it before it reached consciousness? (Multiply that by
several millions, and you MAY have just one of the problems involved
in freeing current/former inhabitants of totalitarian _régimes_ ... )
Kate Gladstone — http://www.learn.to/handwrite
Kay Shapero
Please folks, I think it's time this moved there. If only so I shan't
feel embarassed posting off topic too much... :^)