Category: Education

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In Long Ago Days of Yore. . .

Getting a piece of fiction written and published once took a bit of work. First, there was that literacy thing–you know, being literate enough to at least have a fair idea when you’d just put something down on paper that proved you didn’t have the first clue what you were taking about, for one thing. *sigh* Developing that kind of literacy takes a LOT of reading and perhaps quite a bit of RW experience as well, in many cases.

Then, if one were literate enough to at least have a clue about the deficiencies in one’s storehouse of knowledge and experience, the ability to correct, or at least seriously address, those deficiencies used to come in handy.

And that’s not the whole skill and knowledge set that was once very, very beneficial.

Just having a pedestrian imagination and a verbal vocabulary defined by the lowest common denominator of popular media is all it seems to take to get a novel published nowadays. And the stupider the plots and dumber the characters, the better. *sigh* Evidence: Dan Brown.

One of the worst things I see writers do mimics typical Hollyweird/BoobTube writing. When people who barely manage to inch into the first standard deviation above the norm try to write characters who are more than just average, they tend to write themselves and their acquaintances. Trying to write dialog for a very literate and “brilliant” scientist with a nominal IQ of something north of 150 using a semi-literate (or often even subliterate) mind capable of handling abstract thought at about IQ 115 results in characters that appear to be literate and brilliant only to persons to whom a Zabriskan Fontema appears to be a genius.1

To anyone with more than two active synapses between their ears, such characters seem to be dumber than a bag of hammers.

*meh* I do find such writing marginally interesting, though, as a window into the dull minds of the authors. Of course, when I ask myself, “What WAS this author THINKING?!?” the answer is usually, “Oh, right. Nothing at all. . . ”

1Visiting with a bright, thoughtful and literate person in the upper reaches of the first standard deviation above the norm (according to this person’s estimation; my experience of their abilities leads me to believe their one known experience with IQ measurement fell victim to test anxiety) has spurred me to expand this a bit.

Yes, “merely” bright people can write characters who are “brilliant” and do it competently, creating believable characters, BUT (and this is one HUGE badonka-donk “but”;-)) such persons MUST do their homework! Their research should include a LOT of reading of truly brilliant thinkers (and “conversation” with those thoughts read), face-to-face conversations with such persons–both casual and on-topic in those persons’ areas of expertise–and review of their characterizations and dialog by a literate person whose intellect is of a comparable level to that of the character written.

Better, of course, would be for an author to simply be of the class of persons he is characterizing, to have among his peer group more than a few persons of similar intellect, etc. But, alas! that is NOT the case with Hollyweird/BoobTube-influenced “bright enough for success in a dumbed-down high school setting” subliterates who seem to write most of the “genius” characters in contemporary fiction. *sigh*

BTW, while I enjoy the show in small doses, “The Big Bang Theory” is a very nearly perfect example of this problem in writing. Yes, it has at least one really bright consultant helping to get most of the science references at least within the ballpark of contemporary “consensus science,” but the characters are more laughable caricatures of nerds than perhaps the writers intend. . . or at least in ways the writers could hardly intend. It seems obvious from the writing (and directing and acting) that, aside from minimal input to keep “science-y” comments mostly on track, the folks involved in producing the show fit pretty well into the “semi-literate, nearly bright, clueless about genius” category of content creators I deplore here.

*shrugs* The show’s still entertaining in other ways, and if I view the “brilliant” characters as simply sophomoric poseurs with delusions of brilliance, it occasionally ends up being pretty enjoyable fluff.

But a steady diet would gag a maggot.

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They’re Killin’ Me. . .

No, not my dogs (although my feet to hurt a bit. . . but then I’m getting old, so what do you expect? :-)) People who are fairly literate who nevertheless allow Crap Media (A/K/A the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, badly-edited poplit, etc.) have far, far too much influence over their own vocabularies–spoken and written.

OK, so I engage in quite a bit of “pop-speak” from time to time here. That’s fine. It’s casual writing, and I’m not getting paid to do it. But even “casual” writing should be correct if someone’s getting paid for the words they casually and, all to often–unfortunately–carelessly toss out.

Several times, recently, I’ve seen such abortions as a noun (such as “workout” or “logout”) used as verbs (“work out” or “log out”). Enough lazy, subliterate, immoral idiots do this and you can bet such things will become widely used enough to blur and then eliminate the useful distinctions between noun and verb forms in print.

It’s appalling. . . and as I said, immoral for people to take money to do a job and then do it badly. It’s theft. (It’s also a crime against the English language, but I don’t know of any statute that would apply. *sigh*)

N.B. I do cut a few professionals some slack in certain circumstances. I read a lot of Advance Reader Copies of books, books that are in the penultimate stage of editing before publication. I expect a few errors in such books, because ARCs usually serve as final proofing copies that will see another read-through before actual publication. So I cut those authors/editors some slack if only a few problems crop up. Example: last night I read a (~400-page) ARC that had three glaring errors: “then”for “than” three times. It’s a form of mental typo that sometimes crops up in even the most literate writers’ works, and is almost always caught at one stage or another of the proofreading/editing of a book issued from a good publisher and apparently almost NEVER caught, in my experience, by “Indie” (self-pub) authors whose proofreaders are of an uneven nature. Unfortunately, traditional publishers are more and more drawing authorial, proofreading and editing staff from a pool of college grads who are themselves essentially illiterate, so some ARCs from trad-pubs are littered with all sorts of crap. . . that makes it into the final, published, books. *sigh*

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It’s for the children. . .

The Puppy Blender observes,

“Old argument for college: Go to college so you don’t have to be a waitress! New argument for college: Go to college so you have a shot at that waitressing job!”

Yeh, but even with a college degree giving a shot at low-wage service jobs, that just means longer to pay back the exorbitant costs associated with that (almost worthless?) degree. . .

Ah, but go hire another few hundred administrators for whatever level of education. It’s for the children, right?

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Balance

I used to read EVERYTHING. No, really. Cereal boxes, soup cans, ACTUAL ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS *heh* (after having assembled whatnot, more often than not :-)).

Fluff or food: it’s really all in how one reads it. I re-read my collection of Shakespeare earlier this year, but I’ve reaped as much from thoughtful, critical reading of poorly-written YA books (informally reviewing ’em for my Wonder Woman, librarian) by reading those with an eye to the Good the Bad and the Ugly–and pondering, based on internal evidence, on the causes of each.

It’s all in how one reads what one reads. I read different material and authors for different reasons. I read an Anne Rice book recently (the first such in years for me) and was caught up more in appreciating the craft of her writing than the story and characters, both of which I disliked greatly. . . and which, having read other books by her, I suspected I might. I read David Weber books, despite my irritation at some of his writing flaws–consistently using certain words in ways that move me to suggest he might do with an Inigo Montoya consultation *cough*, his sometimes excessive wordiness, etc.–not even so much for the plots and characters as for the ethic he presents. I do NOT plan on re-reading Calvin’s “Institutes”. Thank you, no. Good stuff, for the most part, but juuuuust a wee tad on the tedious side for me. 🙂

I do try to hold myself down to a book a day, with some success, but I’m not going to make that a strict rule. Sometimes, it does take me three or so days to read a book, but that’s almost always because I have three to five other books I’m reading during that time as well. Always done that, probably always will. It’s fun to dream mixes of books currently in my read pile. 🙂

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Give That Writer a Dope Slap

. . . and an enrollment in a remedial English class.

Yeh, yeh, I know it’s six of one and all that, but, in my experience, writers who write the rather awkward, “had woken me up” instead of “had awakened me” also tend to write such abortions as “backseat” (adj) to refer to a “back [SPACE] seat” –a seat (n.) in the back of something–or “backyard” (again, adj.) to refer to a yard (n.) in the back or “back [SPACE] yard”. These aren’t horrendous bobbles, but they are annoying in that they indicate a sloppiness of craft.

The worse annoyance is that by degrading the language–using adjectives in forms readily recognized as adjectives as nouns, replacing an adjective [SPACE] noun they contribute to the destruction of useful distinctions in words. What? Would a writer of “backseat” (used to refer to a back seat) write driverseat or passengerseat? Maybe so. . . *shudder* “Backyard” used as a noun writers: will you also be consistent enough to use “frontyard” and “sideyard” as nouns? Hmm? Yeh, when one puts it in those colors, such usages look as stupid as they are.

Oh, other abortions often flow like Exlax-induced sharts from the hands of such writers, things like first-person narratives recounting past events in a breathless present tense to, I imagine, induce a sense of urgency in thoughtless readers in much the same way newsreaders attempt to convey a freshness and urgency to their banal lies with the same device. *sigh* Of course, given the temporal deficiencies of readers (or watchers) of such drivel, the device may well work, for values of “work” that include giving an idiot a spoon to use in scooping out more of their own prefrontal cortex.

And indeed, it seems to work pretty much that way. But it does get worse. Really. I recently read about 1/4 of the way through a book wherein the author used just about every dumb device, awkward phrase, and misused word he could cram into the thing in his attempt to. . . write a typical “Dan Brown” pseudo-thriller.

Oh, *gagamaggot*

(That said, the writer was failing to be quite as bad as Dan Brown when I bailed, even with his violent assaults on the English language. But that says more about how execrably bad Dan Brown’s writing is than anything else. . . )

But seriously, “had woken him up” for “had awakened him”? How hard is it to write (and think) just a wee tad less awkwardly?

(OK, OK, apparently pretty darned hard if my own writing’s any example, but take note: I’ve not asked you to PAY to read my scribbles, have I? Hmm?)

Yeh, yeh, I know that BECAUSE of illiterate uses by dumbass writers “backyard,” “backseat” and other such words used as nouns is becoming more acceptable to those who just DGARA about useful distinctions in words, the ability of the written word to inculcate rational thought or any number of other positive values. I despise such rotten, destructive persons and their destructive effects on society anyway. So there. *heh*

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Wandering Around in “Blue Sky” Territory

Here’s a wild and crazy idea for one arrow to add to the “educational reform quiver”:

Vouchers for home schooling. . . with a twist.

Preconditions: pubschools have achievement testing at end of year for EVERY GRADE, no exceptions, no excuses. Period. Kids pass to the next grade based on test scores. No exceptions, no excuses.

Vouchers provided parents who wish to homeschool equivalent to whatever the district spends per pupil for ALL expenses. BUT, the vouchers cannot be redeemed unless the student for whom they are issued passes, IN A FORMALLY PROCTORED SETTING, the SAME achievement test as their pubschool counterparts must pass.

In other words, equivalent expenditure of public funds for what must be assumed to be an equivalent public good, except that homeschooled kids wouldn’t be spending most of their childhood in a prison environment.

At least it wouldn’t provide an incentive for those lame brains who count the daily trip to WallyWorld as a “field trip” for their (fake) “homeschooled” kids. . . unless they required the kids to read and (intelligently) discuss nutrition labels, do math to determine “best buys” and be quizzed on geography based on place of manufacture of different goods, etc.. *heh*

Here’s the post that spurred the thought:

Alternative Education

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Pubschool=Prisons for Kids?

[UPDATE: See, “Last Thursday, I Lied”. be sure to Read the Whole Thing®.]

[Note: I have family members who are REAL teachers and know at least a few more REAL teachers. Heck, I have even known three–THREE–pubschool administrators who were actually worthwhile uses of the oxygen they consumed. Really! Still. . . ]

Pubschool isn’t entirely “prison for kids”. . . but it’s usually the next worst thing. Pubschool certainly was no picnic for me. People kept interrupting my learning to “teach” me things that were on THEIR schedule. . . *heh*

From a Salon article, School is a prison — and damaging our kids:

“. . .the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school.”

Well, especially for boys, for whom pubschool is often a kind of prison camp designed to make them into girls 1, or ANY kid who’s in the second standard deviation above the norm or better on any standard IQ test. “Odds” of all kinds find pubschool to me mind-numbing torture as they are REQUIRED to fit into the box. . . and find the box to be far, far too small.

But. . . the problem is this, though: how can a society educate 2 its population in such a way as to maximize the number of useful, productive citizens? Assembly line “prisons for kids” has been the answer for many years, though good teachers–REAL teachers–do everything they can to minimize the “prison” and “assembly line” aspects and encourage real learning. Oh, but that’s another problem: where does one find REAL teachers in numbers great enough to overcome the disadvantages of the system itself, the “millstones” of pubschool administrators *gag* and the plethora of remote-educrat-meddling they implement?

Education 2 ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. . .

1Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys. From a review:

“Sommers, a philosopher by education and a mother of two boys, shows that the trend she identified in the late 1990s to see boys as defective girls and therefore somehow in need of retooling has continued, and its effects have spread.”

2“Educate” has come to mean, more and more, simply “propagandize, brainwash.” Real education leads from darkness to light. What is created by the system of remote educrats promulgating rules for pubschool administrators to use cutting oxygen from the brains of teachers and students alike being implemented in a system of regimentation, indistinguishable from a prison regime, INTENDED (see Dewey, et al) to turn children into useful little cogs in an industrial machine is a kind of software lobotomization that seems to be designed by a conspiracy of dunces to make the lowest common denominator universal. *sigh* I am in awe of teachers–REAL teachers–who can do battle against this monstrosity day in and day out–actually bringing light to some students!–without going out of their everlovin’ gourds. Such people are amazing.

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Passing thought. . .

I hold teachers–real teachers–in the highest respect. “Educators” (those who are in the “edumacation game” for the ego strokes or the tenure cushion, etc.) notsomuch. I wish I knew more teachers and fewer games players and tenure trackers marking time to retirement.

And, though sadly it would do harm to the 2% who are worth anything at all, I’d be happy to see all pubschool administrators relegated to chain gangs making little rocks out of big ones. At least they could do no harm to society there.

Thatisall.

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“Don’t Know Much About History”: One of the Reasons the US is Getting a “Swirly” from Reality

Victor Davis Hanson beats a drum often heard here at twc:

“Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.”

Remember third world county‘s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”

And remember also that “literacy” is not just being able to decode the written word, either facilely or laboriously. It’s being able to do that AND having a goodly store of useful knowledge gained thereby. Anything less and one is simply either a useful idiot fit for deploying in the service of evil or a completely useless idiot, good for nothing in particular.

Sadly, somewhere near 75-80% of Americans seem to be one or the other of those two idiot alternatives.

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Monsieur Who?

I am not easily irked (*gales of hilarious laughter from friends and family*), but my gizzard’s a bit chapped by all the self-appointed pundits who’ve recently discovered Alexis (Charles-Henri Clérel) de Toqueville’s “Democracy in America” and cite quotations from it attributing them merely to “Toqueville”.

*sigh*

My French profs would be peeved. M. de Toqueville, were he alive today, might also be a bit put out. (Note the proper form above. *heh*) Oh, well. The talking heads and self-appointed pundits may well have the right of it in these days of seriously degraded language. . . I’m sure their usage is Just Fine with all the folks who just DGARA about such things (meaning, of course, the entire Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, their remoras in the Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries and the rest of the promoters of the lowest common denominator).