My concern here, incidentally, is not with explaining my error but rather laying the groundwork for damning the whole of U.S. (and even world) educaton as based on a fundamentally false (and even vicious) principle: the identification of intelligence (and of lignuistic skill) as accurately measured by the writing and reading of the student. Let me image it this way: I think it theoretically possible that he poet of the Iliad would have flunked a 125h-grade English class. He might have been (a) incapable of construing most of the assigned reading and of writing a coherent student paper.
What I am suggesting is that macular degeneration (ann obvious and easily diagnosable condtion) of a retired English professor might, given how much we still don't know abut the human nervous system, be just one of many -- even many many -- physioloical or neurological condtions that can lead not only to poor reaidng but also to poor writing on the part of people who in fact have not just a competent but a superiod command of their language, not just a competent but a suprior capacity to construe complex arguments -- IF THOSE ARGUMENTS ARE ORAL RATHER THAN WRITTEN.
[Digression: 1) Some readers of this are probably muttering, we know about dyslexia. So do I, but I'm not talking about it, but suggesting that there are many conditons than it which can muffle a powerful verbal skill in a context in which verbal skill means skill in reading and writing. (2) At some point my slow reading is going to fuck up this post, because I will not be able to skim ovr my own text fast enough to have it all in mind at once. In other words, a glitch in reading can produce a glitch in writing. And there are probalby other 'glitches' in the human neuolgy that can throw up barriers between conception and the transcription of concept to words on a page or on a screen.]
Now if there exist barriers such that persons with strong verbal skills cannot exercise those skills in writing or reading, then an educational system grounded in writing and reading is going to systemamatically exclude numbers of intelligent people from the intellectuao life of the nation. They flum out or drop out of school earlier than others, they will have access to a smaller knowledge-base in history, literature, sociology, mathematics, etc. They will form general opinions about social relations, govermental processes, etc on the basis of this impoveerished knowledge-base. And university professors as well as k-12 teachers will sit the teachers' lounge grouching about how stupid students are 'these days,' how incapable they are of mastering abstraction, etc. And of course left intellectuals will be thrown into despair at the remarkable difficulty workers have* have in seeing that soldiers are merely trained killers.
And some years ago, when this list was deep into one of its periodic imitatons of a teachrs' lounge bitch session, andie nachgeborenen cited as an example of how Americaans use to be more intelligent, the thousands of ordinary people who stood in the hot sun for hours listening to the Licoln-Douglas debates. Of course -- LISTENING! And TALKING about them. And CVOLELCTIVELY, not isoalte in their lving rooms before the TV or holding a newspaper.
I'm beginning to ramble. But I hope I've said enough to at least trigger some alternative directions of thought in reference to the intelligence of the 80% of the populatoin that makes up the American Working Calss. And some of the more educated will be the more 'stupid,' because most of their kowledge will have come to them through books which they are unable to construe correctly and will have been systematized in their heads by their own writing which will have been thin and incoherent.
Carrol
Andy wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Andy wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Well, I sort of did, but I was referring to clinical mental illness.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Andy
> >
> > I missed that. Unless you mean mercvury poisoning or somethng similar
> > there is no such thing as a "clinical mental illness." Brain chemistry,
> > of course, is involved in the slightest thougt or perception -- it takes
> > a chemical change for you to read these words. Hence activity of neural
> > transmitters is obviously inseparable from all mental activity,
> > including "mental illness." Hence _sometimes_ various pathologcial
> > conditons can be changed with chemicals that affect the flow of those
> > transmitters. But all that does _not_ add up to a clinical mental
> > illness."
> >
> > That said, the stigma on mental illness is still strong enough, and of
> > course stronger in some social contexts than others, that it is absorbed
> > by a person suffering from a particular illness (in a process analogous
> > I suppose to the "self-hating Jew." It can _help_ some patients, then,
> > to be able sto say, to others and to themselves, "I suffer from a
> > chemical imbalance in the brain." And putting it that way to themselves
> > and others probably even contributes to them controlling the illness,
> > i.e., affectng that chemical imbalance or whatever process it is that we
> > call a chemical ibalance.
>
> I'm going to pointedly refrain from asking what that has to do with anything.
>
> --
> Andy
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