Joanna wrote:
>
> > This was not addressed to factory workers; it was addressed to other
> university students, who are intimately acquainted with the promise and
> quicksand of privilege.
Yes. Joanna has nailed it down.
Dennis C wanted to know my reasons for saying no one on this list was in a position to judge the text. It was posted here, he said. But that won't do. If someone quoted on this list pages from a text in theory of equations, we would judge that page from the perspective of someone trying to teach or to learn theory of equations. The same principle applies here. Again I emphasize genere, which for at least a couple millenia has been regarded as the point of departure for judging written texts. (Milton called decorum the secret of writing, and the basis for decorum is genre.) Does this text speak to the students it is addressed to?
And of course it is not even addressed to ALL students. It is addressed only to those students who might be expected to share some fundamental assumptions with the writers of the text. This a lso is a principle taken for granted for well over two millenia. Cornford in his notes to the first book of the Republic begins by noting that Socrates appeals to a principle he shares with Thrasymachus. In other words, one only addresses those who already agree in some imortant respects with your aims. (I've always beenn astounded on this list when I state somethng that has been a commonplace for centuries or millenia and find it treated as a new and shocking idea of myown.)
This leaflet (and it is essentially a leaflet) is a call to arms issued to those who ar ready to welcome such a call. Does it reach that audience? If it does, then it is well written. That is sprecisely what either Pope or Milton would have said.
Carrol
Carrol