The "Green Book" Mentioned in The Abolition of Man
Joe Wolverton, II
and answered before. Has the book that Lewis called "the Green Book" in The
Abolition of Man ever been identified? I've wondered about this ever since I
read Abolition as a freshman in college.
Thanks,
Joe
--
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing."
-Edmund Burke
ddav...@my-deja.com
"Joe Wolverton, II" <wi...@deseretonline.com> wrote:
> I'm new to this group so please forgive me if this question has been
asked
> and answered before. Has the book that Lewis called "the Green Book"
in The
> Abolition of Man ever been identified? I've wondered about this ever
since I
> read Abolition as a freshman in college.
Hi.
I don't know if any published work (any of the CSL bios.) has offered a
positive ID.
When I was in England in 1976, I found one book in the College library
that seemed to me to fit the bill. It was of about the right date, it
was by two authors, and, unless I'm fooling myself, it had the Coleridge
example that CSL quotes from.
That little bit is all I know- I don't have the title written down and
that was a loong time ago. ;-)
Dave Davis
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Andrew Rilstone
>I'm new to this group so please forgive me if this question has been asked
>and answered before. Has the book that Lewis called "the Green Book" in The
>Abolition of Man ever been identified? I've wondered about this ever since I
>read Abolition as a freshman in college.
According to the infallible St Walter the books he refers to are
"The Green Book" = "The Control of Language" by Alex King and Martin
Ketley
Orbilius = "The Reading and Writing of English" by E.G Biaggini
It would be very cool if at this point someone could say "I was taught
English out of that text book, and it never did me any harm."
--
Andrew Rilstone and...@aslan.demon.co.uk http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/
*******************************************************************************
"Then shall the realm of Albion come to great confusion"
*******************************************************************************
Andrew Solovay
<and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>It would be very cool if at this point someone could say "I was taught
>English out of that text book, and it never did me any harm."
And what if that "someone" was Tony Blair?
--
Andrew Solovay
"Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it
would annoy me for just about two and a half minutes if I
heard that you had died in torments."
--The Man Who Was Sunday
AJA
age student? Lewis does say in AoM that the green book philosophy
probably wouldn't have been consciously picked up on by students-
though some damage could be done. I wonder what actual impact it had
on students. For instance I couldn't quote you a single theory about
language- before university, that is- advanced to me from any text. I
couldn't pin point any book read in school as being responsible for my
love of literature. (Too many to choose from.) Or any opinion of any
text or any teacher at the high school level as being responsible for
any appreciation of beauty that I may have. And I had some great
teachers. But we read on our own, because our teachers and parents
and grandparents read great stuff. I do remember at a certain early
point B. F. Skinner and operant conditioning made some noise- but
making chilly children stand before steaming bowls of soup to learn
restraint (?) didn't fly. For a few years a local grade school had
their 12 and 13 year-old students reading a liberal tome called
_Summerhill_. It was touted as the very solution to the ills of
education in this country. Adults who were the beneficiaries of this
liberal 'education' (a stunningly charitable term for the Summerhill
system) are now saying of their 'Summerhill' years or even their
Montessori years that they mostly constructed tepees (if that is what
they were interested in doing) for a couple of years. This was an
actual experience of a friend of mine who was sent to such a school in
the Village in New York City- where the constructing of tepees is of
questionable usefulness, unless one is homeless of course and forced
to live in Central Park. Now it's fashionable to make education,
above all else, fun. Young teachers pack in lots of Magic Markers and
construction paper. In high school. For 14-17 year-olds. Young
teachers do know how to make learning fun, I'll grant you that. Though
it may seem to us old farts that they mistake their students'
enthusiastic consumption of taco chips for enthusiasm for learning to
speak Spanish. Thankfully, there are enough teachers who teach
eclectically- if this doesn't get the job done, i. e. get students to
think, try something else. Of course, there is no national policy in
the U. S. And with all of that there are many bright, creative,
discerning people in this country who came out of the public school
system. No fewer than at any time in our history and probably a lot
more. Probably the same is true in the U. K. Were the green books
something mandated by the government? And what is the prevailing
system now in the U. K.?
Best,
Ann
On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 22:46:31 +0100, Andrew Rilstone
<and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <380f...@news.sisna.com>, Joe Wolverton, II
><wi...@deseretonline.com> writes
>>I'm new to this group so please forgive me if this question has been asked
>>and answered before. Has the book that Lewis called "the Green Book" in The
>>Abolition of Man ever been identified? I've wondered about this ever since I
>>read Abolition as a freshman in college.
>
>According to the infallible St Walter the books he refers to are
>
>"The Green Book" = "The Control of Language" by Alex King and Martin
>Ketley
>
>Orbilius = "The Reading and Writing of English" by E.G Biaggini
>
Andrew Rilstone
>In article <3811f8f3...@news.microdsi.net>, AJA
<ahne...@microdsi.net> writes
<Lots of interesting things>
1: I think I am correct in saying that in 1940, state education ended at
age 14, and "elementary" school was the state school which everyone went
to age 5-14 unless they won a scholarship to a Grammar school.
2: There was no state imposed national curriculum until about 10 years
ago -- schools were theoretically free to teach what they liked. It was
always said that the only subjects which had to be taught by law were
religious studies and P.E -- although in practice, of course, a school
that wasn't teaching reading riting and rithmatic would get closed down.
3: Lewis's interest in The Green Book was that it illustrated, in his
view, an idea or an approach to education which he feared might become
prevalent. His concern was not "The Green Book will turn children into
nihilists" but "There seems to be a philosophical position gaining
acceptance -- to such an extent that it turns up, unstated, in books for
quite young children which are not explicitly about philosophy, which if
allowed to continue unchecked, would turn children into nihilists; the
"Green Book" is an example of this." It isn't quite clear whether he
regards The Green Book <and text books like it> as symptom or cause.
4: I think he goes way, way overboard in Abolition of Man -- there is
some justification for the Humphrey Carpenter (I think) saying it
degenerates from an argument to a harangue. (Is ANYONE prepared to
defend Hooper's blurb about it being the one book apart from the Bible
which everyone on earth should read?) But I think the approach of
starting with something inoccuous, and trying to see what it's
underlying assumptions are, is a valid one.
5: Regarding Summerhhill: Lewis frequently quotes Calvin's remark about
the human race being like a drunk man who, on falling off a horse his
horse on the left side, takes great care next time to fall off on the
right. Extremely liberal schools where the children are happy but don't
learn very much are, I think, greatly preferable to the sorts of
institutions described in Surprised by Joy (or, say, Roald Dahl's "Boy",
or Orwell's "Such Were the Joys" or come to that in the much more nearly
contemporary "Kes".) But some sort of compromise is presumably
achievable.
AJA
<and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[great info about the Green Book philosophy and all]
> But I think the approach of
>starting with something inoccuous, and trying to see what it's
>underlying assumptions are, is a valid one.
I'm glad Lewis thought so, too. He must have been a great tutor
because he asks great questions- that we should all have answers for
in education, if not for every other circumstance of life:
Necessary for what?
Progressing towards what?
Effecting what?
On what ground are we asking [children to learn this]?
What kind of society ought to be preserved?
What is the ground of value?
How shall we be happy and satisfied?
Whence do we derive precedence? (How do we decide what is important-
what is valuable?)
Is it possible to talk about The Natural Law?
(Not to ignore CSL's statement that Why? or What good does it do,
or Who said so, is never permissible- because no values at all can
justify themselves on that level. But kids mostly aren't attempting
to justify the values but to find them in the first place.)
How do we move from finding values to embracing values?
Where's the trouble with this or that view?
Is this meaning for me or meaning thrust on me?
(a la Conditioners)
>5: Regarding Summerhhill: Lewis frequently quotes Calvin's remark about
>the human race being like a drunk man who, on falling off a horse his
>horse on the left side, takes great care next time to fall off on the
>right. Extremely liberal schools where the children are happy but don't
>learn very much are, I think, greatly preferable to the sorts of
>institutions described in Surprised by Joy (or, say, Roald Dahl's "Boy",
>or Orwell's "Such Were the Joys" or come to that in the much more nearly
>contemporary "Kes".) But some sort of compromise is presumably
>achievable.
Hopefully, yes. I think that the compromise _is_ struck in good
schools. The sheer meanness of schools described in SBJ was shocking
to me, sickening really. I've attended every kind of school from
little country schools to slick suburban schools, had some pretty
tough teachers who were permitted to mete out corporal punishment, and
did, and I never encountered anything even approaching what CSL
describes. I'm sure that others in the U.S. have different
experiences. Now days general sensibility seems to have improved. But
I'd also observe that courts here take care of egregious tyranny of a
more stubborn nature.
All the best,
Ann
PS: Who decides on the UK national education policy, BTW? Do they
decide philosophy, textbooks, methods, etc. Is it more to micro- or
macro-management?
Andrew Rilstone
<ahne...@microdsi.net> writes
>Hopefully, yes. I think that the compromise _is_ struck in good
>schools. The sheer meanness of schools described in SBJ was shocking
>to me, sickening really. I've attended every kind of school from
>little country schools to slick suburban schools, had some pretty
>tough teachers who were permitted to mete out corporal punishment, and
>did, and I never encountered anything even approaching what CSL
>describes. I'm sure that others in the U.S. have different
>experiences. Now days general sensibility seems to have improved. But
>I'd also observe that courts here take care of egregious tyranny of a
>more stubborn nature.
It's significant that the prep school which Lewis describes was regarded
as a Very Bad Thing in Lewis's own time -- "Oldie" had been subjected to
a criminal prosecution and ended up in a mental hospital. But the public
school was thought of as a *good* school, and Warnie is prepared to
defend it and say that Lewis went overboard in condemning it.
>
>All the best,
>Ann
>PS: Who decides on the UK national education policy, BTW? Do they
>decide philosophy, textbooks, methods, etc. Is it more to micro- or
>macro-management?
As I understand it, government set national attainment tests, which are
quite specific, along the lines of "Key stage 3: A child should be able
to distinguish between nouns and verbs", but does not lay down specific
text books. I think that, for example, the history attainment tests are
fairly specific about which areas of history ought to be looked at. The
teaching profession often complains that the government is too obsessed
with tests (and thus with what is testable) but the actual content of
the key-stages seems fairly un-controversial. But the government has
become increasingly keen on passing down instructions about how teaching
is to be done -- for example, there has to be a "literacy hour" and a
"numeracy hour" in all (state) schools -- children have to be taught
reading for a whole continuous hour every day. There are rumours of a
new compulsory "civics" class which I look forward too with horror. (Key
stage 3 "Explain why Tony is such a good prime minister".) But as Mr
Lewis says somewhere, you won't know how much good, or how much harm any
system of education does for about 20 years, when the children who
experienced it have grown up and can tell you what "really" happened.
AJA
<and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>PS: Who decides on the UK national education policy, BTW? Do they
>>decide philosophy, textbooks, methods, etc. Is it more to micro- or
>>macro-management?
>
>As I understand it, government set national attainment tests, which are
>quite specific, along the lines of "Key stage 3: A child should be able
>to distinguish between nouns and verbs", but does not lay down specific
>text books. I think that, for example, the history attainment tests are
>fairly specific about which areas of history ought to be looked at. The
>teaching profession often complains that the government is too obsessed
>with tests (and thus with what is testable) but the actual content of
>the key-stages seems fairly un-controversial. But the government has
>become increasingly keen on passing down instructions about how teaching
>is to be done -- for example, there has to be a "literacy hour" and a
>"numeracy hour" in all (state) schools -- children have to be taught
>reading for a whole continuous hour every day. There are rumours of a
>new compulsory "civics" class which I look forward too with horror. (Key
>stage 3 "Explain why Tony is such a good prime minister".)
Now this is where it gets squirrel-y, IMO. Same thing here. Here you
have non-educator politicos suggesting if not dictating first what
should be taught and then how it should be taught. These non-educator
types are test oriented because that is the only way they have of
assessment- not knowing much of anything about the process. Testing
as you may know is becoming a huge controversy here. The National
Testing Service (S.A.T.s) practically decides who will get into what
university. Universities use a drop dead number such as say 1350/1600
on combined verbal and math tests below which a university will not
even look at a candidate's application. I frankly don't see the system
changing anytime soon. (Of course there is the isolated myth about the
kid who built an airplane in his back yard. Harvard is said to have
accepted him when he proved it could be flown- or was it Princeton,
and Harvard would offer an acceptance only if a private school student
could fly the plane.)
> But as Mr
>Lewis says somewhere, you won't know how much good, or how much harm any
>system of education does for about 20 years, when the children who
>experienced it have grown up and can tell you what "really" happened.
And that, Andrew, is the very best word on the matter!
Best,
Ann
m...@mooreffoc.com
>On Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:12:37 +0100, Andrew Rilstone
><and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>[great info about the Green Book philosophy and all]
Which has not yet reached my server. :-(
/snip/
>>5: Regarding Summerhhill: Lewis frequently quotes Calvin's remark about
>>the human race being like a drunk man who, on falling off a horse his
>>horse on the left side, takes great care next time to fall off on the
>>right. Extremely liberal schools where the children are happy but don't
>>learn very much are, I think, greatly preferable to the sorts of
>>institutions described in Surprised by Joy (or, say, Roald Dahl's "Boy",
>>or Orwell's "Such Were the Joys" or come to that in the much more nearly
>>contemporary "Kes".) But some sort of compromise is presumably
>>achievable.
>
>Hopefully, yes. I think that the compromise _is_ struck in good
>schools.
It's odd to me to see in Lewis and Kipling references to students
being caned/whipped for not doing their homework (or for getting it
wrong???) As tho it really had something to do with learning.
We see spanking etc as a way to keep the children from misbehaving.
More to do with the babysitting function of schools than the learning.
So this seems an odd pole to be looking for the middle of. :-) Imfo,
increasing learning does not have to mean increasing caning etc.
Certainly not bullying. Too much of that sort of thing would take the
kids minds off studies.
In fact, the most learning seems to come from situations like Lewis
and Knock. Or when a class is set up with fun academic competition:
reasearch for debating materials etc.*
Imto, most schools have to do too many things: babysit a lot of kids
who would rather be elsewhere, keep them from fighting, make them all
learn the same subjects at the same rate whether they are interested
or not, etc. There's a dumbing down factor. Procrustes Elem.
The idea of voucher schools and homeschooling seems good. I loved my
high school (grades 10-12, pre-college), both academically and
socially. I'd like to see everyone have that kind of experience.
Presumably with voucher schools, there would be a lot of small schools
appealing to different sorts of students, so everyone would be able to
find a compatible group. (With internet, presumbly we could get some
consistency on what is actually taught over a year or so. But why
couldn't the same internet supervisor provide materials for a lot of
different home and voucher classes on the same unit? On the internet,
nobody knows whether you're a smart 10 year old at home, or a dumb 18
year old in remedial school. The kids would be able to interact with
their peers in their own little group in the same room.))
Mary
* (One ten year old told me about a 6-week history/geography project
that was run like an RPG: the class divided into teams, each being
investors/captains of a colony ship in the 16th Cen. They had money
and opportunity to decide where to go and what to do. But they had to
research everything. "You're buying rope for the ship? Ok, what kinds
can you find? What will it cost? ... You're going to Paradise Island?
Ok, what kind of maps can you get? What will they show? ... You're
using /that/ map? < evil grin > Ok, you sail for X days and see no
land." "Can we send back a pigeon for another map?" "Whose map are you
ordering this time? How many good luck rolls do you have left for the
pigeon getting through?" Etc.
--------------------
http://www.sonic.net/mary/DejaLew-dir/rants/8heads.htm
I. The Law of General Beneficence: (Golden Rule, help the community)
II. The Law of Special Beneficence (Put own family and friends first)
III. Duties to Parents, Elders, Ancestors (Respect and care for elders)
IV. Duties to Children and Posterity (Protect and care for children)
V. The Law of Justice (marriage, property, fair courts)
VI. The Law of Good Faith and Veracity (Tell truth, keep promises)
VII. The Law of Mercy (Be tender-hearted)
VIII. The Law of Magnanimity: (Soul should rule the body)
Kerry Thompson
(And, I really did laugh out loud.)
Solidarity
Kerry Elizabeth Thompson
hal...@earthlink.net
http://www.woodbetweentheworlds.net
Andrew Solovay wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 22:46:31 +0100, Andrew Rilstone
> <and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >It would be very cool if at this point someone could say "I was taught
> >English out of that text book, and it never did me any harm."
>
AJA
>The idea of voucher schools and homeschooling seems good. I loved my
>high school (grades 10-12, pre-college), both academically and
>socially. I'd like to see everyone have that kind of experience.
>Presumably with voucher schools, there would be a lot of small schools
>appealing to different sorts of students, so everyone would be able to
>find a compatible group. (With internet, presumbly we could get some
>consistency on what is actually taught over a year or so. But why
>couldn't the same internet supervisor provide materials for a lot of
>different home and voucher classes on the same unit? On the internet,
>nobody knows whether you're a smart 10 year old at home, or a dumb 18
>year old in remedial school. The kids would be able to interact with
>their peers in their own little group in the same room.))
>
Here, this is already happening. For instance, we don't offer
Japanese, but interested kids can take Japanese via e-mail,
video-conferencing and the like from another school in the area.
I think this will be the way to go in the future. As you indicate,
some sort of consistency will need to be worked out- for accredidation
and the like. It will take very dedicated folks- as of now there
isn't much if any monetary incentive to set up such a thing. And even
teachers have to eat!
> * (One ten year old told me about a 6-week history/geography project
>that was run like an RPG: the class divided into teams, each being
>investors/captains of a colony ship in the 16th Cen. They had money
>and opportunity to decide where to go and what to do. But they had to
>research everything. "You're buying rope for the ship? Ok, what kinds
>can you find? What will it cost? ... You're going to Paradise Island?
>Ok, what kind of maps can you get? What will they show? ... You're
>using /that/ map? < evil grin > Ok, you sail for X days and see no
>land." "Can we send back a pigeon for another map?" "Whose map are you
>ordering this time? How many good luck rolls do you have left for the
>pigeon getting through?" Etc.
This is great. I've seen classrooms transformed by such projects.
There is a marketing program called Hog Dog Stand which is similar.
Kids have to figure profits and losses, what sells and doesn't, etc.
At the end of the program they learn if they've been successful or
not. A full critique is provided- what they did right or wrong.
These kinds of programs, if well done (and many are not) leave
textbooks in the dust. But it is not for every learning task, of
course.
A
m...@mooreffoc.com
<and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <380f...@news.sisna.com>, Joe Wolverton, II
><wi...@deseretonline.com> writes
>>I'm new to this group so please forgive me if this question has been asked
>>and answered before. Has the book that Lewis called "the Green Book" in The
>>Abolition of Man ever been identified? I've wondered about this ever since I
>>read Abolition as a freshman in college.
>
>According to the infallible St Walter the books he refers to are
>
>"The Green Book" = "The Control of Language" by Alex King and Martin
>Ketley
>
>Orbilius = "The Reading and Writing of English" by E.G Biaggini
>
>It would be very cool if at this point someone could say "I was taught
>English out of that text book, and it never did me any harm."
And demonstrated that his imagination and good sense were as good as
those of pre-GreenBook generations, I presume. :-)
I had some brushes with some such elements: General Semantics etc.
Remember getting good things from it, don't remember harm. However I
was brought up before that on Lang, Oz, Avonlea, Tarzan, all sorts of
good things. And was reading serious fantasy (Charles Williams, George
MacDonald) on my own probably before the GS stuff. (And Swinburne,
Kipling, etc.)
I remember seeing a few GS things I thought very silly, and dismissing
them. So maybe I'd been vaccinated, if one can be vaccinated against
sterility. :-)
(Hm, did Coleridge and Wordsworth have any loss of appreciation of
literature in their sterile periods? Any Green Book sorts of ideas
going round then? Some of their own theories during the bad periods
were sort of Green Bookish, weren't they?)
"The map is not the territory" is a GS slogan. I've sometimes wondered
how I got such a strong dose of that. From Lewis and then from GS
maybe.
I never did much foreign language: a little Latin in high school, a
little French and German in college. Sayers has an essay online, "The
Lost Tools of Learning", saying, tho not in those words, that it takes
Latin or such at a young age to give people the attitude I describe as
"map is not territory". I had it long before taking any Latin. Not
sure whether I got it partly from from GS or just from reading Lewis
and Rose Macaulay and GKC and Angela Thirkell, et al. For people who
can't get it from Latin as a second language :-), or from secondhand
sources as I perhaps did, GS might be very useful.
Tho it's still not the only source. Mark Twain of course -- and the
semi-literate people he modeled on. "Tall as a river stood on end" ...
"Chicken ain't got no cutlets".... Such people play with language and
show it who's boss. :-)
Mary
Andrew Rilstone
>It's odd to me to see in Lewis and Kipling references to students
>being caned/whipped for not doing their homework (or for getting it
>wrong???) As tho it really had something to do with learning.
George Orwell, having painted a picture of his school only marginally
less cruel than Lewis, then admits that it would be hard to see how you
*could* teach a child Greek and Latin without the threat of corporal
punishment. Of course, now that the cane is completely banned from
English schools and classics are thriving, we can see how wrong he
was...
samd
>
> George Orwell, having painted a picture of his school only marginally
> less cruel than Lewis, then admits that it would be hard to see how you
> *could* teach a child Greek and Latin without the threat of corporal
> punishment.
Teach them Classical Civilization at the same time, so that there's
some incentive to know Latin and Greek? It (sort of) worked for me.
Alternatively, just teach ancient languages like modern ones. The
traditional method is obsessed with formal rules, and turns
translation into a wierd puzzle-solving exercise. If you taught
Latin like French then that shouldn't be a problem.
The only attempt in that line that I've come across was the Cambridge
Latin Course, which failed because the O- and A-level exams were
written to work with the old style of teaching. In particular, the
Cambridge Course had its own grammatical terminology that you had
to unlearn before you could pick up the 'proper' terms.
On the third hand, it _was_ possible to teach Latin in the old style
and still communicate (and create) enthusiasm. See Kipling's story
'Regulus', in the newer editions of 'Stalky and Co' for a well-drawn
fictional example.
> Of course, now that the cane is completely banned from
> English schools and classics are thriving, we can see how wrong he
> was...
Both public schools I attended had corporal punishment but rarely used
it because, frankly, it's just not as effective as lines and/or detention.
Three hours of enforced boredom on a Saturday afternoon is a lot more of
a disincentive than a few minutes of pain. Clips on the ear for not paying
attention in class were as effective as it got.
As for classics...they don't have any obvious utility over ordinary
history and modern languages, from a teaching perspective, so it's
not really surprising that they don't get taught in most schools. One
of the nicer ironies in H G Wells' 'The World Set free' is the radical
idea of future schools that teach Latin like a modern language.
PS: SF author and linguist C J Cherryh has a grammar-free approach to
teaching yourself latin on her website:
http://www.cherryh.com/latin_language.htm
Only three short lessons, but it's good stuff.
--
Sam Dodsworth (sa...@springboard.net)
'The Enlightenment - for whom? The Industrial Revolution - for whom?
The Space Age - for whom? I began to wonder if I was living in a
Golden Dark Age of Reason.' - This is a History of New York
Matthew Collett
<sa...@springboard.net> wrote:
>Teach them Classical Civilization at the same time, so that there's
>some incentive to know Latin and Greek? It (sort of) worked for me.
OK, as long as it's not overdone (not too much Parthenon in the optative).
>Alternatively, just teach ancient languages like modern ones. The
>traditional method is obsessed with formal rules, and turns
>translation into a wierd puzzle-solving exercise. If you taught
>Latin like French then that shouldn't be a problem.
Personally, I enjoyed learning Latin _much_ more than learning French,
precisely because you were given all the rules up-front, whereas in French
I could never be really sure whether I was doing exactly the right
thing. (That, and those French vowels.)
Best wishes,
Matthew Collett
--
The word "reality" is generally used with the intention
of evoking sentiment. -- Arthur Eddington
samd
>
> In article <381ED0A4...@springboard.net>, samd
> <sa...@springboard.net> wrote:
>
> >Teach them Classical Civilization at the same time, so that there's
> >some incentive to know Latin and Greek? It (sort of) worked for me.
>
> OK, as long as it's not overdone (not too much Parthenon in the optative).
Doesn't take much to make it fun - just mix in the material from one
of those "Horrible Histories" books and give them some of the primary
sources. Much better than endless endless accounts of Gauls attacking
the ditches, anyway.
> >Alternatively, just teach ancient languages like modern ones. The
> >traditional method is obsessed with formal rules, and turns
> >translation into a wierd puzzle-solving exercise. If you taught
> >Latin like French then that shouldn't be a problem.
>
> Personally, I enjoyed learning Latin _much_ more than learning French,
> precisely because you were given all the rules up-front, whereas in French
> I could never be really sure whether I was doing exactly the right
> thing. (That, and those French vowels.)
I know what you mean, but it's not a sentiment that I share - I've always
hated abstract puzzles. And even if you like them, that approach tends to
make you concentrate on the formal system at the expense of the meaning.
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to start producing total gibberish
in a Latin translation because you've lost the sense of the text? I
remember it happening a lot a school (and there's an example in "Stalky
and Co" too, now I think about it), but never in French classes.
Personally, I discovered that I could consistently get a 50% mark by
keeping an eye on the context and making educated guesses. It didn't
do much for my academic career, but it came in useful when I did
A-Level Classical Civilization a few years later. It's surprising how
much you can get out of Latin literature with a sense of the language
and a facing translation.
Matthew Collett
<sa...@springboard.net> wrote:
>> Personally, I enjoyed learning Latin _much_ more than learning French,
>> precisely because you were given all the rules up-front, whereas in French
>> I could never be really sure whether I was doing exactly the right
>> thing. (That, and those French vowels.)
>
>I know what you mean, but it's not a sentiment that I share - I've always
>hated abstract puzzles. And even if you like them, that approach tends to
>make you concentrate on the formal system at the expense of the meaning.
>Have you ever noticed how easy it is to start producing total gibberish
>in a Latin translation because you've lost the sense of the text? I
>remember it happening a lot a school (and there's an example in "Stalky
>and Co" too, now I think about it), but never in French classes.
>
>Personally, I discovered that I could consistently get a 50% mark by
>keeping an eye on the context and making educated guesses.
Are you talking about 'translation' (Lat./Fr -> Eng.) or 'composition'
(Eng.-> Lat./Fr.)? Context and guesses will get you a long way in the
former for any foreign language, and even if the result is inaccurate, it
should never be gibberish. Conversely, the latter can readily produce
nonsense regardless of the target language; if it is less likely to for
French than Latin that is surely just a reflection of the relative
similarity of each to English rather than of differences in teaching
styles.
In the same way, on a more practical level, my knowledge of French is far
greater than my knowledge of German, but I would far rather attempt to
converse in German than in French, because my 'metaknowledge' is much more
complete in German. I learnt German as an adult, studied it in a much
more 'formal' style, and in consequence I know what I know and what I
don't.
>It's surprising how
>much you can get out of Latin literature with a sense of the language
>and a facing translation.
Agreed. I'm a great fan of facing translations. I don't speak a word of
Italian, but my copy of Dante is facing English-Italian, and I do think it
helps.
samd
>
> In article <38200E81...@springboard.net>, samd
> <sa...@springboard.net> wrote:
>
> >Have you ever noticed how easy it is to start producing total gibberish
> >in a Latin translation because you've lost the sense of the text? I
> >remember it happening a lot a school (and there's an example in "Stalky
> >and Co" too, now I think about it), but never in French classes.
> >
> >Personally, I discovered that I could consistently get a 50% mark by
> >keeping an eye on the context and making educated guesses.
>
> Are you talking about 'translation' (Lat./Fr -> Eng.) or 'composition'
> (Eng.-> Lat./Fr.)?
I'm talking about translation: by the time I was doing O-Level Latin,
composition was a very small and unpopular option in the exam. Needless
to say, my few attempts at composition were not impressive.
> Context and guesses will get you a long way in the
> former for any foreign language, and even if the result is inaccurate, it
> should never be gibberish. Conversely, the latter can readily produce
> nonsense regardless of the target language; if it is less likely to for
> French than Latin that is surely just a reflection of the relative
> similarity of each to English rather than of differences in teaching
> styles.
There's a phenomenon I've observed (in myself and others): Latin translation
that starts out fine and then gradually drifts into something that makes
no sense at all. Thinking back on occasions when I did it myself, I think
I remember being so focused on the mechanical process of translation that
I forgot to sanity-check what I was producing. This makes me wonder if the
trouble with the formal approach is that it's easy to lose sight of the fact
that a language is about communication and not just puzzle-solving.
The relatively large differences between Latin and English are a contributing
factor too, but that just makes an emphasis on meaning over form more
important, in my opinion. Of course, I'm not a reliable judge - I'm a
poor linguist at best, and (as I've said) I don't have much patience
with abstract puzzle-solving.
> In the same way, on a more practical level, my knowledge of French is far
> greater than my knowledge of German, but I would far rather attempt to
> converse in German than in French, because my 'metaknowledge' is much more
> complete in German. I learnt German as an adult, studied it in a much
> more 'formal' style, and in consequence I know what I know and what I
> don't.
Of course you're keen on the formal approach - someone else might be
more comfortable with a greater vocabulary and not mind the possibility
of bad grammar. I do agree that formal grammar is useful, but I also
think that it can be very dry and off-putting for a beginner - particularly
if they don't have to learn it for their own language. One of the least
convincing arguments I ever heard for the teaching of Latin in schools was
"it's an excellent basis for English grammar". Why not just teach English
grammar and cut out all the excess baggage?
Dan Drake
>... One of the least
> convincing arguments I ever heard for the teaching of Latin in schools was
> "it's an excellent basis for English grammar". Why not just teach English
> grammar and cut out all the excess baggage?
What do they know of English who only English know? The study of a
foreign language, preferably a related one, can make one think about the
grammar of one's own language, with good effects. But bad, dull teaching
of anything will not make people think about anything, except how to get
away.
Whether Latin is a good choice of language on this basis is a good
question. A highly inflected language can expand the consciousness just
by being so different from English; but is Latin the optimal difference,
on a scale from Frisian dialect to, say, Japanese? Who knows? (We do
know what bad effects Latin can have on English composition, other things
being equal. :)
But there really are those who think that Latin or Greek is the right
language for learning Grammar, because they have Grammar and English
doesn't. THAT I don't understand.
--
Dan Drake
d...@dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/index.html
What exactly was the sin of Sodom?
Explicit details at
http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?ezekiel+16:49
Christopher J. Henrich
> What do they know of English who only English know?
AARGH- I've been waiting for YEARS for the good time to say that, and you
scooped me!
>
>
> Whether Latin is a good choice of language on this basis is a good
> question. A highly inflected language can expand the consciousness just
> by being so different from English; but is Latin the optimal difference,
> on a scale from Frisian dialect to, say, Japanese? Who knows? (We do
> know what bad effects Latin can have on English composition, other things
> being equal. :)
>
> But there really are those who think that Latin or Greek is the right
> language for learning Grammar, because they have Grammar and English
> doesn't. THAT I don't understand.
It can be hard to "learn" the grammar of your native tongue precisely because,
by the time you start doing this in school, you already know that grammar very
well
in a way that is very different from school & book learning. The advantage of
Latin is that much of its syntax is visible in a way that English syntax is
not.
For some students at least, Latin and English grammar are mutually
illuminating.
For others, apparently, it's a drag. I don't know what to do about that.
Chris Henrich
Matthew Collett
<sa...@springboard.net> wrote:
>I do agree that formal grammar is useful, but I also
>think that it can be very dry and off-putting for a beginner - particularly
>if they don't have to learn it for their own language.
Which these days of course, they usually don't :-(.
>One of the least
>convincing arguments I ever heard for the teaching of Latin in schools was
>"it's an excellent basis for English grammar". Why not just teach English
>grammar and cut out all the excess baggage?
Latin has been so influential on the development of English that some
knowledge of it is of assistance (perhaps more with vocabulary than
grammar), but calling it a "basis' for English grammar is overstating it.
I agree that teaching the English grammar itself should probably have
higher priority, but at the present few school pupils seem to encounter
either.
Andrew Rilstone
>Andrew Rilstone wrote:
>>
>> George Orwell, having painted a picture of his school only marginally
>> less cruel than Lewis, then admits that it would be hard to see how you
>> *could* teach a child Greek and Latin without the threat of corporal
>> punishment.
>
>some incentive to know Latin and Greek? It (sort of) worked for me.
>traditional method is obsessed with formal rules, and turns
>translation into a wierd puzzle-solving exercise. If you taught
>Latin like French then that shouldn't be a problem.
>
Screwtape says that English humans believe that physical exercise makes
you too tired to be lustful -- despite the proverbial behaviour of
soldiers and sailors.
"We have used schoolmasters to put this story about" he says "Men who
were really interested in chastity as an excuse for games and therefore
recommended games as an aid to chastity."
One wonders whether the same schoolmasters were interested in Latin and
Greek as an excuse for discipline, and therefore recommended discipline
as an aid to Latin and Greek?
You could put this in a positive light, and say that the memorisation of
irregular verb forms and little declension tables was good mental
gymnastics and logical training: it was *supposed* to be a puzzle
solving exercise. The point of learning geometry is to hone the mind;
the fact that 1% of students may become civil engineers and also find it
useful is an accidental side effect: the point of learning Greek is also
to hone the mind; the fact that it lets you read Homer is also a side
effect. Any other puzzle-- Chess playing, say -- would do the job
equally well.
Or you could put in a negative light and say that the point of education
is to reproduce a hierarchical authoritarian society; and that if you
are going to teach second declensions and optatives, then you have more
or less got to have formal lessons and a disciplined environment.
Formal lessons and a disciplined environment produce the sorts of
children that the State wants: the fact that they also know Greek is
again a side effect. Cleverness and original thought aren't any help in
knowing what word you would use to address a Greek table: kids who are
obedient, conformist or scared of punishment knuckle down and do the
memorisation; disobedient, rebellious non-conformist ones don't. Hence,
the system encourages -- or at any rate rewards --obedient, conformist
children and thus produces the obedient, conformist citizens that the
state desires.
I doubt that any teacher or school ever believed either version in this
extreme form: but I do think that the old systems of learning were bound
up with ideology as well as theories of teaching. English politicians
rarely talk about Latin nowadays, but they do frequently extoll the
virtues of "rote learning", particularly the memorisation of the
multiplication table. I think that this has a great deal to do with
ideology, and very little to do with mathematics.
>
>> Of course, now that the cane is completely banned from
>> English schools and classics are thriving, we can see how wrong he
>> was...
>
>Both public schools I attended had corporal punishment but rarely used
>it because, frankly, it's just not as effective as lines and/or detention.
>Three hours of enforced boredom on a Saturday afternoon is a lot more of
>a disincentive than a few minutes of pain. Clips on the ear for not paying
>attention in class were as effective as it got.
I think that the one comprehensive school I attended may have had
corporal punishment. It operated a Room 101 policy whereby the
headmaster's study was known to contain The Worst Thing In the World but
no-one was quite sure what it was. This had the affect of traumatising
everyone without having any notable effect on behaviour or knowledge of
Greek.
If something is compulsory, then people have got to be compelled to do
it in some way, and this implies punishment. Whether blows to the head
(old system) are more or less "effective" and more or less "cruel" than
fining your parents (new, enlightened system) I couldn't say. I read an
interview the other day with the chief inspector of schools who was
complaining (quite rightly) about the very high number of children being
expelled from state schools. He said (quite rightly) that some schools
were expelling children for laughably trivial offences: he cited an
example of a group of children kicked out of school for wearing the
wrong colour tie. He said that there were much better and more direct
ways of dealing with this: for example, the headmaster could have a
supply of embarrassingly unfashionable ties in his office, and the
offending children could be made to wear those instead, since
embarrassment is a pretty good deterrent. It's been a long time since
I've ripped a newspaper to shreds in disgust.
I was certainly not intending to advocate cruelty to children, whether
administered in the form of corporal punishment, latin or P.E. I was
sort of ironically amused by the resigned pragmatism of Orwell; not
approving of using punishment to encourage work, but sort of admitting
that it worked. Lewis comes close to saying the same thing, actually: "I
can also say that though (Oldie) taught geometry cruelly, he taught it
well..." If you are going to teach a subject in the boring and formal
way discussed above, then "Learn these verbs or I will punish you" might
possibly be a necessary tool. If there are subjects which can best (or
only) be taught in a boring and formal manner, then a society which
doesn't believe in punishment will stop teaching them. To that extent,
Orwell may just possibly have had a point.
I've been reading a little Plato recently, and this, of course, got me
off on one of my nostalgia trips about the Olden Days, when C.S Lewis's
roamed the plains of the jurassic and absolutely everyone (well,
everyone worth talking about) knew Greek and had read Aristotle in the
original. For Plato, the whole point of education is to pass on
"ideology": to teach prospective citizens and guardians how to be Good--
or rather, to fix their minds on Truth so that the best of them may
apprehend The Good. Mathematics has value only is so far as it
concentrated the mind on Truth; and only those forms of literature which
show or may be seen as encouraging good behaviour are to be admitted.
It's all in Lewis, of course: one wonders what they taught them at these
academies.
Andrew Rilstone
> I do agree that formal grammar is useful, but I also
>think that it can be very dry and off-putting for a beginner - particularly
>"it's an excellent basis for English grammar". Why not just teach English
>grammar and cut out all the excess baggage?
I think its worse than that: I think that a lot of the time, "English
grammar" means "shoehorning English into a grammatical structure
borrowed from Latin, which it doesn't really fit."
If "English Grammar" means "declining nouns in a non-inflected language;
learning to understand that "table" is accusative whereas "table" is
ablative"" then, certainly, it helps a great deal to have learned Latin
first. Latin may even help you to understand some of the more pedantic
English rules such as why you say "the person who gave it to me" but
"the person to whom I gave it" and why it is a sin to carelessly split
an infinitive.
But if "English Grammar" means "Writing clear, coherent English with at
least some of the semi-colons in the right place" then Latin is worse
than irrelevant.
Andrew Rilstone
<sa...@springboard.net> writes
>I know what you mean, but it's not a sentiment that I share - I've always
>hated abstract puzzles. And even if you like them, that approach tends to
>make you concentrate on the formal system at the expense of the meaning.
>in a Latin translation because you've lost the sense of the text? I
>remember it happening a lot a school (and there's an example in "Stalky
>and Co" too, now I think about it), but never in French classes.
Lewis's brilliant but eccentric private tutor taught Greek by doing
vebatum translations of long passage from Homer, then tossing Lewis the
book and told him to translate as much as he could of the same passage
for himself. Of course, it became a game for Lewis to try to translate a
few more lines than Knock had done.
Quoth Lewis: "He seemed to value speed more than absolute accuracy. The
great gain was that I soon became able to translate a great deal without
(even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in
Greek...Those in whom a Greek word lives only while they are hunting for
it in the lexicon and who then substitute the English word for it are
not reading Greek at all: they are only solving a puzzle."
AJA
<and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Lewis's brilliant but eccentric private tutor taught Greek by doing
>vebatum translations of long passage from Homer, then tossing Lewis the
>book and told him to translate as much as he could of the same passage
>for himself. Of course, it became a game for Lewis to try to translate a
>few more lines than Knock had done.
>
>Quoth Lewis: "He seemed to value speed more than absolute accuracy. The
>great gain was that I soon became able to translate a great deal without
>(even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in
>Greek...Those in whom a Greek word lives only while they are hunting for
>it in the lexicon and who then substitute the English word for it are
>not reading Greek at all: they are only solving a puzzle."
There are those of us which ascribe to the Whatever-Works school of
thought about methods. I have no small appreciation for old Knock- he
found a method which seemed to work and he stuck with it!
Administrations come and go, methods go in and out of favor. Good
teachers adapt. Here's a chuckle for a Sunday night before going back
into the fray!:
A historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be
executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in
one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns.
The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and
laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can." To
which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might
happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I
might die. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing.
Sometimes even the most unlikely students learn in spite of us!
All the best,
Ann
Alan Kreutzer
>If something is compulsory, then people have got
>to be compelled to do it in some way, and this
>implies punishment.
I cannot let this pass without bringing in the name
of the author who explained the world to me. The
late John Holt was originally a schoolteacher, then
wrote on school reform, but finally gave up on the
idea of schooling entirely and became an advocate
of home-based education.
His conclusion was that schools were doomed to failure
for exactly this reason - that they operate on the
basis of compulsion, and compulsion must operate on
a basis of fear. (Perhaps the fear of being beaten,
or maybe just the fear of disappointing those adults
on who's good will everything depends.) When people
are afraid, then their real goal will not be learning,
it will be staying out of trouble.
I think I seek the truth about schooling in one
small note in his first book, "How Children Fail."
He writes about his experience as a teacher, and in one
chapter tells at length of his struggle trying to
teach his class simple arithmetic using a balance
beam, and problems like: "If I put two ounces four
inches from the center, how far from the other side
will four ounces balance?"
The students struggled for months with these problems
and he tried every trick he could think of, in vain,
to make them simpler.
Then the note: << a couple of years later I put
a balance beam and some weights on a table at the
back of my class, and just left it there without saying
anything about it or trying to "teach" it. Most of the
students in my class, including some very poor students,
figured out just by messing around with it how it worked. >>
Ah, well. Leaving them alone to just mess around with it
is the one technique the schools will NEVER adopt.
m...@mooreffoc.com
<and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <3822E87A...@springboard.net>, samd
><sa...@springboard.net> writes
>> I do agree that formal grammar is useful, but I also
>>think that it can be very dry and off-putting for a beginner - particularly
>>if they don't have to learn it for their own language. One of the least
>>convincing arguments I ever heard for the teaching of Latin in schools was
>>"it's an excellent basis for English grammar". Why not just teach English
>>grammar and cut out all the excess baggage?
>
>I think its worse than that: I think that a lot of the time, "English
>grammar" means "shoehorning English into a grammatical structure
>borrowed from Latin, which it doesn't really fit."
Well, occasionally the shoehorn does cut both ways. :-)
>
>If "English Grammar" means "declining nouns in a non-inflected language;
>learning to understand that "table" is accusative whereas "table" is
>ablative"" then, certainly, it helps a great deal to have learned Latin
>first. Latin may even help you to understand some of the more pedantic
>English rules such as why you say "the person who gave it to me" but
>"the person to whom I gave it" and why it is a sin to carelessly split
>an infinitive.
>
>But if "English Grammar" means "Writing clear, coherent English with at
>least some of the semi-colons in the right place" then Latin is worse
>than irrelevant.
Mm. It's useful for defending things like 'Going round the cape, the
mountain came in sight.' Ablative absloute or something: 'The cape
having being rounded' etc. Or, 'Hopefully he will be rewarded.' :-)
Also foreign grammar helps to describe 'me' as not always accusative,
but sometimes functioning as 'moi'. (disjunctive?) Or would help if I
could now remember the terms. :-)
samd
>
> On Fri, 5 Nov 1999 14:23:54, samd <sa...@springboard.net> wrote:
>
> What do they know of English who only English know? The study of a
> foreign language, preferably a related one, can make one think about the
> grammar of one's own language, with good effects. But bad, dull teaching
> of anything will not make people think about anything, except how to get
> away.
I think the assertion that "learning Latin helps teach English grammar" is
usually based on the vague notion that Latin's grammatical structure is
more visible than other languages'. I'm skeptical of this because I think
Latin (as traditionally taught) has been analyzed to the point that it's
artificially loaded with grammar, and because I think that grammar in the
sense of formal rules is overrated. There simply isn't one "correct"
grammar for any living language - although it's convenient to behave
as if there is for teaching purposes.
> Whether Latin is a good choice of language on this basis is a good
> question. A highly inflected language can expand the consciousness just
> by being so different from English; but is Latin the optimal difference,
> on a scale from Frisian dialect to, say, Japanese? Who knows? (We do
> know what bad effects Latin can have on English composition, other things
> being equal. :)
I've heard (in an Urban Legend-ish way) that formal English grammar is partly
the result of nineteenth-century attempts to force stronger links with Latin
- hence, for example, the taboo on split infinitives. I'm prepared to be
corrected on this, though - it sound too convenient to be entirely true.
samd
>
> Ah, well. Leaving them alone to just mess around with it
> is the one technique the schools will NEVER adopt.
In principle, I think I agree with you. In practice..? My primary school
maths course ("Fletcher Maths", if anone remembers it) used that approach.
(Or a variant, anyway - the textbooks had a lot of exercises designed to lead
you on, but no cut-and-dried conclusions or explanations.) As I recall, it
sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I remember getting a real intellectual
thrill when I figured out the point of positional notation but I also
remember units that I didn't get at all, until we switched to a different
method a year later.
The conclusion? Perhaps that there's no perfect system, beyond the obvious
"having a good teacher" - and there are probably as many styles of "good
teaching" as there are children.
Alan Kreutzer
> > Leaving them alone to just mess around with it
>
>My primary school maths course ... used that approach. (Or a variant,
>anyway - the textbooks had a lot of exercises designed to lead you on,
>but no cut-and-dried conclusions or explanations.)
But that ISN'T the same approach. They're still trying to lead
you where they want you to go. They just think they have a seeaky
new way to do it. But all the students know that SOMETHING is
expected of them. And the ones who figure it out and give the
teacher what he wants will be the winners, and the rest will
be the loosers. Fear is still at the heart of it.
It still runs on the false proposition (which is at the root
of almost all formal education) that "learning is the result of
teaching." But it isn't. Learning is something learners do
for themselves. (Though a teacher may sometimes be a useful tool.)
I know this from my own life. I spend 16 years in schools, But I
do not see how anything that happened there matters. Everything I
know that is of any importance to me, I learned somewhere else.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees
from being cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs
from being sent to school, and generally stopped and encouraged
ordinary people who wanted to live and let live.
Lynn Fortin
him, and so now are my children, who have never been to school and who
learn (mostly) by messing around.
It is actually interesting to merge his ideas with CSL's 8/13 - one has
to be the example of both simultaneously, of course!
Lynn
Alan Kreutzer wrote:
> Andrew Rilstone wrote:
>
> >If something is compulsory, then people have got
> >to be compelled to do it in some way, and this
> >implies punishment.
>
samd
>
> (OTOH, I've never quite understood the suggestion that the rule 'do not
> split infinitves' has a Latin origin: there cannot possibly be any need
> for such a rule in Latin, since Latin infinitives are single words!)
That was the justification that I heard: Latin infinitives are single
words so English infinitives should behave like single words. Makes
sense to me.
samd
>
> samd wrote:
>
> > > Leaving them alone to just mess around with it
> >
> >anyway - the textbooks had a lot of exercises designed to lead you on,
> >but no cut-and-dried conclusions or explanations.)
>
> But that ISN'T the same approach. They're still trying to lead
> you where they want you to go. They just think they have a seeaky
> new way to do it. But all the students know that SOMETHING is
> expected of them. And the ones who figure it out and give the
> teacher what he wants will be the winners, and the rest will
> be the loosers. Fear is still at the heart of it.
Not (or at least not necessarily) in a modern English primary school.
No exams to work for and no punishments for bad work (beyond being
given it to do again). Primary school teaching is very unstructured
because the teachers have more leeway to apply modern educational
theory. Which is not to say that it wasn't coercive - it just wasn't
competitive.
> It still runs on the false proposition (which is at the root
> of almost all formal education) that "learning is the result of
> teaching." But it isn't. Learning is something learners do
> for themselves. (Though a teacher may sometimes be a useful tool.)
"A teacher's task is to encourage their students to learn". Discuss.
I don't think that it's contentious to say that learning is _much_
easier with a good teacher. Forcing people to memorize facts under
the threat of punishment is a common recourse of lazy or untalented
teachers, but it's only a subset of what most people mean by
'teaching'. Try thinking of them as 'learning facilitators', if it
helps.
> I know this from my own life. I spend 16 years in schools, But I
> do not see how anything that happened there matters. Everything I
> know that is of any importance to me, I learned somewhere else.
I had a really bad time, personally and academically, right through
my school career but I couldn't in all honesty say anything like that.
If I include only the things that I learned in formal lessons, I can
cite as examples:
- Arithmetic in general, and particularly the multiplication tables.
- Modern history, as part of the basis of my political views.
- Human georaphy, ditto - particularly a course on the developing
countries that was taught to us the the third form (about age 13).
- George Orwell and Bertold Brecht, as authors that teachers led me
to discover.
- The French language.
All of these play useful and/or important parts in my life, and I learned
them all in formal lessons. As an added irony, I know the multiplication
tables because of a teacher who set witing lists of 'random tables' as
a punishment.
None of which is to say that I think the current system of formal
education is fine - it's clearly broken, and needs radical fixes.
(I also think that the best fixes, like the best political ones,
would be sufficiently difficult to implement that it's worth
settling for second best.) I do think that just letting the pupils
teach themselves might not be the best alternative, though.
m...@mooreffoc.com
<a...@teleportNoSPAMplease.com> wrote:
>Andrew Rilstone wrote:
>
>>If something is compulsory, then people have got
>>to be compelled to do it in some way, and this
>>implies punishment.
Haven't seen this post.
Is "you can't race a bicycle till you can ride a bicycle" a
punishment? Or, "you can't play a trumpet song till you can play a
trumpet". Those are just facts.
Is it punishment to require a player to start with a first level
paladin and work his way up?
With good enough carrots -- or, as Alan suggests, world enough and
time -- many sticks become obsolete. :-)
Latin declensions and conjugations might seem an exception, and
yet....
Give me an unlimited time and budget, and nice kids.... Do people
realize there are Klingon /grammar/ books being /sold/???
A really good video game. Star Trek, Star Wars. Roddenberry's/Lucas'
original scriptwriters. Subtitles for Yoda, Spock, Kllingons etc when
they lapse into their native langauge (let which be Latin :-).
Subtitles in Latin /and English/ for a while.
<<<<
Sub rosa
Under table
>>>>
Maybe delayed. Let the kids pick up some vocabulary that way: get the
idea of which stems fit with which subjects. Turning off the subtitles
speeds the play. Player character has a translator machine maybe that
prints them on a portable screen.
Phase in more Latin scenes. Chekov is hiding and spying on the
Klingons, trying to figure out what they're saying WHICH IS IMPORTANT
TO THE PLOT. His translater screen fumbles. The English gets spotty,
onlly the Latin sentences remain complete.
Another incident: Spock disappears, leaves clue note/s in Latin. The
crew try to figure it out. "Where is he telling us to go?" Details of
translation become important; this makes it worthwhile looking up the
rules.
Have two teams of kids racing to the rescue. (Temple of Doom, a whole
diary as clue, maybe. Mostly in Latin.) Both teams have got grammar
books as part of their equipment. Misinterpretations /matter/.
Turing test. Some Vulcan character or Yoda type in orbit starts giving
clues/directions for a surface journey -- through a little pager sort
of thing which only prints Latin. At every branch of the path, the
player characters have to figure out what he is trying to tell them.
Any room you can get through without calling up the English version of
these clues -- scores extra points. :-) And of course saves time. But
a good DM will have some traps where the fine points of grammar
/matter/. (Does having your character fall in a pit of acid count as a
punishment? :-)))
Add a competition/debate factor maybe. "You think an expedition to
Ganymede is what this clue calls for? Team B thinks otherwise? Ok, you
both have a date before teh Admiralty to present your case and see
which team they will give more equipment to. In the meantime you can
lobby with their clerk, try to persuade him point by point as you work
on the translation."
Hm. And if the obstacles they're meeting include singing sirens ... an
old voyage book in Latin might be helpful, if they can figure it
out.... Details of traps taken from the original....
Or if the NPCs they're negotiating with, some sort of political
intrigue.... Hints to be found in another old book as to who is
secretly enemies with who....
>
>I cannot let this pass without bringing in the name
>of the author who explained the world to me. The
>late John Holt was originally a schoolteacher, then
>wrote on school reform, but finally gave up on the
>idea of schooling entirely and became an advocate
>of home-based education.
Sounds like a good resource for home-schooling. Details?
>
>His conclusion was that schools were doomed to failure
>for exactly this reason - that they operate on the
>basis of compulsion, and compulsion must operate on
>a basis of fear. (Perhaps the fear of being beaten,
>or maybe just the fear of disappointing those adults
>on who's good will everything depends.) When people
>are afraid, then their real goal will not be learning,
>it will be staying out of trouble.
Yes. But a better designed school ought to be possible. Kids like to
get together and learn things: sailing etc. They also like debating
and Dungeons and Dragons. (When arguing about how many damage dice to
roll for fallling off a dragon, suddenly the math formula for velocity
becomes /very/ interesting. :-)
Maybe the whole school would have to be non-compulsory tho. :-) If too
many kids were compelled to attend, who really didn't want to be
there, it wouldn't be so much fun.
>I think I seek the truth about schooling in one
>small note in his first book, "How Children Fail."
>He writes about his experience as a teacher, and in one
>chapter tells at length of his struggle trying to
>teach his class simple arithmetic using a balance
>beam, and problems like: "If I put two ounces four
>inches from the center, how far from the other side
>will four ounces balance?"
>
>The students struggled for months with these problems
>and he tried every trick he could think of, in vain,
>to make them simpler.
>
>Then the note: << a couple of years later I put
>a balance beam and some weights on a table at the
>back of my class, and just left it there without saying
>anything about it or trying to "teach" it. Most of the
>students in my class, including some very poor students,
>figured out just by messing around with it how it worked. >>
>
>Ah, well. Leaving them alone to just mess around with it
>is the one technique the schools will NEVER adopt.
Which schools? I've heard rumours of such. :-) Certainly the bigger
and more established the school (and the more compulsory attendance),
the less likely.
M
Andrew Solovay
>
> A really good video game. Star Trek, Star Wars. Roddenberry's/Lucas'
>original scriptwriters. Subtitles for Yoda, Spock, Kllingons etc when
>they lapse into their native langauge (let which be Latin :-).
I've been assured that in the first Star Trek movie ("Star Trek: The
Emotionless Picture"), the conversation in "Vulcan" between Spock and
T'Pau was actually in Akkadian. (I was told this by a
religious-studies student who was then suffering through Accadian
classes...)
I can believe they did this. No made-up language sounds as real as any
real language.
Of course, if the scene *was* in Akkadian, it was probably a
conversation about grain yields and tax receipts, no matter what the
subtitles said.
Dan Drake
wrote:
> In article <38269FB9...@springboard.net>, samd
> <sa...@springboard.net> wrote:
>
> >I've heard (in an Urban Legend-ish way) that formal English grammar
(meaning, I assume English grammar like she is taught)
> >is partly
> >the result of nineteenth-century attempts to force stronger links with Latin
> >- hence, for example, the taboo on split infinitives. I'm prepared to be
> >corrected on this, though - it sound too convenient to be entirely true.
>
> There is _some_ truth in this, in that occasionally a rule has been taught
> that comes from assuming that English should be like Latin rather than
> from actual English usage. Such psuedo-English grammar would be more
> likely to have its origins in the Renaissance than in the 19th century,
Having opened my mouth a couple of days ago on this matter, I opened a
book (Growth and Structure of the English Language, Otto Jespersen, IX
edition, 1938) and got some more information. Whereas I had thought the
misconception that Latin grammar is a good model for English to come from
the 18th century, the real culprit is the 17th, from about 1660. Dryden
cleaned up the later editions of his work by correcting sentences that had
ended with a preposition; he also criticized the learned Ben Jonson for
that habit.
Get this: In a preface Dryden said that he was sometimes confused as to
what was grammatically right, and "[I] have no other way to clear my
doubts but by translating my English into Latin, and thereby trying what
sense the words will bear in a more stable language."
>...
Alan Kreutzer
>Is it punishment to require a player to start with a first level
>paladin and work his way up?
Not necessarily. You are certainly free to decide how to teach,
as long as the student is also free to decide whether to use you
as a teacher, or somebody else who uses a different plan, or
just mess around on their own.
Holt makes this clear in one of his later books. He describes a
very formal school of Spanish, with heavy duty classwork, hours
of homework, and students kicked out if they can't keep up.
It's one of the schools he approves of - to the surprise of
most of his readers. But the method, he says, is not the point.
He approves because it's completely voluntary; you go there only
if you think their method will be useful to you. Otherwise you
can go somewhere else... or maybe just find someone who speaks
Spanish and talk to her. (That's how we all learned our first
language, after all.)
>With good enough carrots -- or, as Alan suggests, world enough and
>time -- many sticks become obsolete. :-)
There are many families educating their children at home right now.
(One of them just posted to this list.) Some of them try to
re-create the school experience,with lessons and classes and
homework. But many others have actually tried letting the
children direct their own learning - and it seems to work
just fine. (I know one of those children is now attending
Harvard University - the first school building he had ever
set foot in.)
I watched my own daughter teach herself to read, before she
started school. I didn't teach her. I just read to her.
She taught herself. Some schol people think that can't happen -
you HAVE to be taught. But I saw it with my own eyes. (I am told
that I did the same thing, and neither of us are geniuses.) (Well,
maybe SHE is.)
Sigh. Yes, she is going to school. I am ashamed to admit
that I am too cowardly and lazy to go so far against the grain
myself. I greatly admire those who have done so.
>>
>>The late John Holt ...
>
>Sounds like a good resource for home-schooling. Details?
>
Many of his books are still in print, and the homeschool advocacy
group that he founded (Growing Without Schooling) is still in
business. They sell his books, other homeschooling materials, and
publish a monthly newsletter. Details at: http://www.holtgws.com/
Those actually interested in homeschooling should get a copy of
"Teach Your Own". I wish everyone would read at least his first
book: "How Children Fail".
But, alas, even if they did .... He tells about visiting schools, when
he was still a school reformer. He would be met by eager young
teachers who said "We LOVE your books, we do EVERYTHING you told us to!"
Then he would find out that they were, indeed, doing everything he
had intended as bad examples to be avoided"
(Probably every reformer in every field could tell a similar story.)
-------------------------------------------------------------
" And they made good laws and kept the peace and
saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down,
and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being
sent to school... "
Matthew Collett
>I've heard (in an Urban Legend-ish way) that formal English grammar is partly
>the result of nineteenth-century attempts to force stronger links with Latin
>- hence, for example, the taboo on split infinitives. I'm prepared to be
>corrected on this, though - it sound too convenient to be entirely true.
There is _some_ truth in this, in that occasionally a rule has been taught
that comes from assuming that English should be like Latin rather than
from actual English usage. Such psuedo-English grammar would be more
likely to have its origins in the Renaissance than in the 19th century,
though a rule has got into the textbooks it can be hard to get rid of it
again.
My favourite example is the rule that the copula (i.e. the verb 'to be')
takes a complement (in the nominative) rather than a object (in the
accusative), and that one should therefore say 'It was he', instead of 'It
was him'. This is correct for Latin, but nonsense for English: 'It was
him' is perfectly normal English usage, with attested examples in good
writers all the way back to Alfred the Great.
(OTOH, I've never quite understood the suggestion that the rule 'do not
split infinitves' has a Latin origin: there cannot possibly be any need
for such a rule in Latin, since Latin infinitives are single words!)
Best wishes,
Matthew
Matthew Collett
<vhIsdqY67dTD-p...@dnai-207-181-236-75.cust.dnai.com>,
d...@dandrake.com (Dan Drake) wrote:
>Dryden
>cleaned up the later editions of his work by correcting sentences that had
>ended with a preposition; he also criticized the learned Ben Jonson for
>that habit.
So he is the one responsible for this rule 'up with which we should not put'?
>In a preface Dryden said that he was sometimes confused as to
>what was grammatically right, and "[I] have no other way to clear my
>doubts but by translating my English into Latin, and thereby trying what
>sense the words will bear in a more stable language."
Well, yes, dead _is_ stable, even if not usually what medics mean by the
term :-).
Best wishes,
Matthew Collett