Foucault & Chmsky ( Was Re: [lbo-talk] Prose Style, was Time to Get Religion)

Tayssir John Gabbour tayssir.john at googlemail.com
Fri Dec 15 22:56:49 PST 2006


On 12/16/06, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> So far in ideology/obscurity threads three writers I've admired in the
> past have shown clay feet. The first was Orwell when references to him
> finally sent me back to "Politics and the English Language." Then I read
> the passage in which, according to Tayssir, he "answers" the criticisms
> against him. I still think of Chomsky as an important writer, but those
> "answers" are simply pathetic. He is not really as bad as he seems to be
> in that text, which shows most vividly what Justin described as his
> "vulgar marxism."

Well, I already offered some evidence which suggests Chomsky consciously disagrees with vulgar marxism. Perhaps you should hook up with Dershowitz and use stronger barbs like "Planet Chomsky," which are harder to falsify?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what specifically you find pathetic about Chomsky's response. It seems you voice the same allergic response to Chomsky's whole piece, which many targets of his criticism reflexively voice when he denounces their claims. It's not any specific argument he makes that's the problem, but rather general outrage at his slaughtering of their sacred cows.

(Far-leftists who denounce him are unusual though -- they like his arguments when he's on Their Side. So unlike those on the right, they have to qualify their positions before letting loose on him.)


> And then I checked out the text by Feynman that
> Tayssir recommends, in which I find the following passage:
> [...]
>
> This is rather pathetic. In the first place, as Miles has been noting
> over and over again, those scores are _not_ going down. And in the
> second place, it is sad to see as great a scientist and as sparkling a
> writer as Feynman not notice that those educational theories really
> can't be reduced to "Succeed" or "Fail." There are too many other
> elements involved. School enrollments have been incrasing steadily for
> 100 years. So the _obvious_ question is what would have happened if the
> techniques of 1900, teaching the narrow selection of students who
> continued to high school, had been continued in a society where almost
> everyone goes to high school.

For those who don't know Feynman's background, he's fought to oppose rote learning and fraudulent textbooks. After being asked by California's Board of Education to select textbooks, he was incensed by the fraud and bribery: "Everything was written by somebody who didn't know what the hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we are going to teach well by using books written by people who don't quite understand what they're talking about, I cannot understand. I don't know why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!"

When asked to sum up his experiences of teaching in Brazil, he claimed: "I have discovered something else. By flipping the pages at random, and putting my finger in and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what's the matter -- how it's not science, but memorizing, in every circumstance."

Now, you (Carrol) selected one of the broadest claims by Feynman in that 1974 talk he gave; he didn't cite specifically which data he referred to. However, he did offer more concrete examples in the fields of: advertising, physics, psychology and parapsychology. Do you disagree with any of those specific examples he cited?

(Disclaimer: I think the school and prisoner systems are flawed to a more fundamental level than either you or Feynman seem to discuss here; I couldn't say which of you two is right about test scores from over 30 years ago.)

Tayssir



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list