A Humorous Look at Etymology
Yargy, the adjectival of the exclamation “yarg,!” itself a variant of “arg,” “argh,” “aarg,” or “aargh” is an archaism of polyglot origins. Rarely used since the Websterian lexicographic and orthographic reforms of the early 19th century in its American English survivals, its extinction in the rest of the world is sadly remarkable. Regarded by linguistic purists as slang of the lowest socio-economic orders, yargy has an honored and expressive past among the literate and sophisticate of all classes.
Denotatively, yargy refers to a task or event that is tedious, unpleasant or otherwise revolting; i.e., nauseating. Such references are clear in the Middle English gargy from the Norman French gargou, via the Old French gargouille, namely the throat. See gargle, gargyole.[i ] Yargy is readily found in several medieval pieces, particularly in the anonymous Kent and Sussex poets [ii] and in one unpublished fragment of Lady Katharine Swynford:
Ruls in our reye
And roted in the stree,
For wickede wederes
And yargy brokes and brynke... [iii]
That these uses continued down the centuries can be seen in subsequent references in such variant forms as:
At ten o’cock at night the whole cargo of the chamber utensils is flung out of a back window that looks unto the street or lane, and the maid calls “Gardy loo” to the passengers.—Smollett, Humphrey Clinker (1771)[iv]
Yargy, though of diminshed use generally, enjoys a plentitude of currency among Midwestern descendants of mid-nineteenth century Norwegian immigrants, especially from Valdres and Balestrand areas. The continued use of yarg! and its inflections has been found due to the cognate use in Old Norse of yo argene, the berserker battle cry of the Viking raiders, clearing their throats, expectorating or (says Henrik Lunde Larsson) vomiting on their victims.[v]
In a seminal work, Raji Pouri Bannashari has traced yarg to the proto-Indo European “ghargh,” a hacking cough. His efforts to further link the word to Cro-Magnon speech would have been a linguistic breakthrough, which unfortunately, he did not live to achieve.[vi]
i Cf the monograph of professor Hector de Sainte Genevieve, La Grande Gargouille et Ses Associations dans les Langages Europeens, Paris, 1865.
ii See the fine collection of Sir Reginald Rexroth-Jones, Expletive and Invective References in the Doggerel of the Sudbury Poet and His Circle, 1312-1343, Canterbury, 1912.
iii Ms. D777S77 in the private collection of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Efforts of Dame Angela Potter-Lamely to attribute these lines to Chaucer have not been accepted by other scholars of the Chaucerian canon. See her "Rules in our reye," Drawn & Quarterly, XCVI (October 1948) 312-337.
iv As quoted in The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, based on the original book of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, revised by Bergen Evans, Ware, Hertfordshire, 1994 reprint of 1970 edition, page 449.
v See "Yarg og Oofta," Papers before the International Conference on Going Berserk, Nordic Council, 1955, 177-212 [Norwegian with English summary].
vi See his Glottal and Epiglottal Interjections among Gothic and Sanskrit Cognates and their Pre-Literate Origins, New Delhi, 1989.
_____
I wrote this spoof in the latter 1980s when our son, Kristofer Sween, asked me if I could find the origin of "yargy." Finding any origin impossible, I made up a “likely” explanation and sent the report to him. Kristofer turned around and shared it at a gathering of his friends who remarked on my information. When I found they had taken it seriously, I afterwards made sure to call it humor.
For retrieval of my posts with greater relevance, logic and precision than Google has yet to provide, see CeptsFormIndex for those index links.
I welcome all comments to blog articles. For personal comments to me, send to rogdesk@charter.net.
© Copyright 2009 by Roger Sween.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Presidents, Politics, Education
Commentary by Roger Sween (c) Copyright 2009.
Today a view prevails that education is too important to leave to educators. Today, partisanship runs roughshod over most issues so that taking a civil approach to our challenges is a challenge itself. Recently, President Obama’s efforts to address schools collided with partisanship even before the public knew what he would say.
Education is the process by which we learn to learn and thereby make informed choices. Politics is the process by which we make choices in our association with one another. Therefore, education and politics have their foundational link.
At our national birth, the Continental Congress provided for the addition of new states from public lands, and dedicated the 16th section in each township for the support of schools. Subsequent federal interest towards education grew slowly as it did in other social areas.
Our federal government presently has responsibility to ensure equal educational opportunity for all and to improve the quality of that education through support, research and information. Presidents since Eisenhower have kept close to education and our public schools. Presidents have often gone into schools to speak to students. Our 40th and 41st presidents were the first to use television broadcasts beamed directly to schools across the country; their remarks distinctly differ. Transcripts appear in Internet copies.
Ronald Reagan talked before a junior high school audience, gathered in the State Dining Room, November 14, 1988, shortly before leaving office. He talked about the peaceful transfer of power in the recent presidential election, the U.S. as the world’s oldest self-governing democracy, our leadership in the world, and the onset of technological change. He urged students “that the most important thing you can do is to ground yourself in the ideas and values of the American Revolution.” He invoked God as the helper in our foundation, described the Founders as the descendants of the Pilgrims, and extolled the values of faith and family.
Except to refer to American Education Week, the words education and learning do not appear in Reagan’s remarks. He took ten questions on such topics as the war on drugs, his accomplishments, the federal deficit and taxes, minority educational opportunities, and gun control. These exchanges took twice as long as his remarks. Judge for yourself whether his answers are partisan.
George Herbert Walker Bush talked from a junior high school classroom in DC, October 10, 1991, near the end of his third year in office. He refers to the simultaneous release of the National Goals Report, a report card on current levels of student achievement. He challenged, “Education matters, and what you do today, and what you don’t do can change your future. ... Work harder, learn more, revolutionize American education. ... No excuses.” He referred to their teacher as an exemplar of study and success and pointed out successful students in their school.
In these prior occurrences, administrators and teachers likely made choices whether to invite the presidents into their schools. Such is the nature of educational decisions. We do not know whether non-educational influences affected those decisions. In the present case, we do know. Today as compared to eighteen years ago, it is easy via the Internet to whip up opposition when some partisan does not want someone else heard.
Unfortunately, some school administrators now play it safe, trying to avoid a “political football.” What have they to fear but being hassled? Do they not realize that the First Amendment is on their side? Do they not understand the Constitutional guarantees whereby students have access to free speech. Instead, they cautiously screen whether the potentially offending speech needs to be accepted, redacted, or ignored. Hooray for those who seize the teachable moment and stand behind it!
What do students learn about this approach to information? We must fear information, especially when disagreeable. We are not to make up our own minds based upon criteria that tests information. Authority is a better route to knowledge than thinking and learning for oneself after hearing, reflecting, discussing and deciding.
Let us be glad when parents are so concerned about what their children might receive outside the home that they want to know what that message is. Here is a vast improvement over parents who surrender their children to television or some other techno distraction. Certainly, parents have this right to have their concerns met. Minnesota Statutes protect the right by specifically allowing parents to opt their children out of curriculum components for some other agreeable substitute.
More commendable are those parents who realize that at some nearby point their children go into the world of give and take. Such parents have led their children in self-reliant thinking, the desire to know, and the ability to stand up for their ideas and beliefs.
By this means, the public enjoyment of freedom of speech does not dwindle before the wishes of some who are bothered by the same opportunity and need to deny it to others.
This commentary, slightly revised from the original, first appeared in the Red Wing Republican Eagle, 10 September 2009, page 4.
Roger Sween is a past president of the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education and of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom. He writes about ideas on CeptsForm and other companion blogs.
Today a view prevails that education is too important to leave to educators. Today, partisanship runs roughshod over most issues so that taking a civil approach to our challenges is a challenge itself. Recently, President Obama’s efforts to address schools collided with partisanship even before the public knew what he would say.
Education is the process by which we learn to learn and thereby make informed choices. Politics is the process by which we make choices in our association with one another. Therefore, education and politics have their foundational link.
At our national birth, the Continental Congress provided for the addition of new states from public lands, and dedicated the 16th section in each township for the support of schools. Subsequent federal interest towards education grew slowly as it did in other social areas.
Our federal government presently has responsibility to ensure equal educational opportunity for all and to improve the quality of that education through support, research and information. Presidents since Eisenhower have kept close to education and our public schools. Presidents have often gone into schools to speak to students. Our 40th and 41st presidents were the first to use television broadcasts beamed directly to schools across the country; their remarks distinctly differ. Transcripts appear in Internet copies.
Ronald Reagan talked before a junior high school audience, gathered in the State Dining Room, November 14, 1988, shortly before leaving office. He talked about the peaceful transfer of power in the recent presidential election, the U.S. as the world’s oldest self-governing democracy, our leadership in the world, and the onset of technological change. He urged students “that the most important thing you can do is to ground yourself in the ideas and values of the American Revolution.” He invoked God as the helper in our foundation, described the Founders as the descendants of the Pilgrims, and extolled the values of faith and family.
Except to refer to American Education Week, the words education and learning do not appear in Reagan’s remarks. He took ten questions on such topics as the war on drugs, his accomplishments, the federal deficit and taxes, minority educational opportunities, and gun control. These exchanges took twice as long as his remarks. Judge for yourself whether his answers are partisan.
George Herbert Walker Bush talked from a junior high school classroom in DC, October 10, 1991, near the end of his third year in office. He refers to the simultaneous release of the National Goals Report, a report card on current levels of student achievement. He challenged, “Education matters, and what you do today, and what you don’t do can change your future. ... Work harder, learn more, revolutionize American education. ... No excuses.” He referred to their teacher as an exemplar of study and success and pointed out successful students in their school.
In these prior occurrences, administrators and teachers likely made choices whether to invite the presidents into their schools. Such is the nature of educational decisions. We do not know whether non-educational influences affected those decisions. In the present case, we do know. Today as compared to eighteen years ago, it is easy via the Internet to whip up opposition when some partisan does not want someone else heard.
Unfortunately, some school administrators now play it safe, trying to avoid a “political football.” What have they to fear but being hassled? Do they not realize that the First Amendment is on their side? Do they not understand the Constitutional guarantees whereby students have access to free speech. Instead, they cautiously screen whether the potentially offending speech needs to be accepted, redacted, or ignored. Hooray for those who seize the teachable moment and stand behind it!
What do students learn about this approach to information? We must fear information, especially when disagreeable. We are not to make up our own minds based upon criteria that tests information. Authority is a better route to knowledge than thinking and learning for oneself after hearing, reflecting, discussing and deciding.
Let us be glad when parents are so concerned about what their children might receive outside the home that they want to know what that message is. Here is a vast improvement over parents who surrender their children to television or some other techno distraction. Certainly, parents have this right to have their concerns met. Minnesota Statutes protect the right by specifically allowing parents to opt their children out of curriculum components for some other agreeable substitute.
More commendable are those parents who realize that at some nearby point their children go into the world of give and take. Such parents have led their children in self-reliant thinking, the desire to know, and the ability to stand up for their ideas and beliefs.
By this means, the public enjoyment of freedom of speech does not dwindle before the wishes of some who are bothered by the same opportunity and need to deny it to others.
This commentary, slightly revised from the original, first appeared in the Red Wing Republican Eagle, 10 September 2009, page 4.
Roger Sween is a past president of the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education and of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom. He writes about ideas on CeptsForm and other companion blogs.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Equity Issue
The Equity Issue & AAUW's Membership
I am a member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), an organization that prides itself on learning, the study of issues, and civil discussion. Membership is currently putting these values to the test as it prepares to engage at its national convention in a full scale revision of its operating bylaws. Bylaws revision has come to us after the previous convention in 2007 voted overwhelmingly to restructure the organization and charge the Bylaws Committee to develop bylaws to carry out such restructuring.
After more than a year of work, publication of the bylaws and supporting material has opened considerable explanation, discussion and controversy. At the start, members have differed chiefly over a change in membership eligibility. What follows is one example of this interchange.
On April 27, 2009, Nancy Shoemaker of North Carolina informed me that she had seen an opposition piece dealing with the membership question on the blog Herban Sprawl. I decided to look at it and then to write a response. That piece follows.
What AAUW Is About
Thanks so much for raising these questions. I am grateful for every avenue to discuss them.
I am one of the people who joined AAUW out of attention to its aims, not because of any need to recognize my academic achievements. That was 20 years ago when AAUW changed membership eligibility to admit men. Since then, I have steeped myself in AAUW. I became the first male president of an AAUW branch and held other branch offices. I attended every state convention since 1989, including this last weekend. I served on state committees and under two state presidents as administrative assistant, a job broader than it sounds.
Consequently, I also became involved at the national level, attending association conventions from Providence (2003) onwards. I happen to be from a branch and state that for several years has worked for a more inclusive membership. In fact, our branch generated the bylaws amendment, further supported by AAUW Minnesota, to extend membership to those who have an associate or equivalent degree and AAUW passed in 2005.
I am now serving my fourth and final year on the AAUW Bylaws Committee, the group that revised the currently proposed bylaws for our restructured organization. We did as charged by the delegates at the 2007 convention to prepare bylaws for the restructured organization beginning July 2009. Many areas required action, but membership issues that have been under discussion for several years, attract the most controversy.
We are making changes for our organization in the 21st century. Other national organizations are doing the same. As the Bylaws Committee researched restructuring, we found lots of eagerness for information about positive changes, but few actual changes being made at the time except at the directorial level. The results of extensive member input in AAUW’s strategic planning process showed demand for a changed organization that will be leaner, efficient, and flexible, and up-to-date.
You are right that membership eligibility is an idea. I disagree that it is a bad idea, and I am not sure that the discussion of it is raging. Rage is a passionate, violent or insane anger, hardly a term that goes along with discussion. My experience or observation is that the discussion has become emotional because change is an emotional experience. Arguments pro the change and pro not making the change come from our understanding and our perspective. As we discuss, our shared aim is to widen our perspective and deepen our understanding so that we see the issue on mutual terms.
Membership eligibility is an integral part of who we are as an association. We come together in any association – family, church, a democracy, or whatever – for mutual benefit and benefit beyond our group. It is never exclusively about a person individually but about our togetherness. For AAUW and its bylaws, the membership question, as with all the rest of the bylaws proposals, stems from how we see our see our mission and the possible ways to achieve it. That mission, restated in our bylaws as purpose, is “AAUW advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.” In short, as we say, “Equity is still an issue.”
AAUW began in 1881 with a few college graduate women as a means to get together, support one another, and do things. Soon the newly organized group was doing projects that affected the provision of equal educational opportunity, raising funds, doing research, and granting money. They recruited new members, but at first only those members who graduated from colleges and universities that met AAUW’s criteria for provision of educational opportunities equal to men. In that specific regard, AAUW has long ago achieved one of its original aims. All of the activities begun by our association have evolved and expanded over the years.
Membership eligibility is one of our comprehensive bylaws changes, proposed chiefly to bring our membership in line with our mission. If our mission is equity, then our membership ought to be all those who support equity. Will this radically change membership? Not likely, but it could. Here are some reasons:
1. Who do we want to associate with? We want to associate with anyone who wants to work for equity for women and girls and in the manner we have traditionally done and by the activities on which we focus: advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research.
2. What kind of person is it that would join such an organization? Our associational mission is likely more demanding and long-range than many organizations. Potential members are those who know and understand the values of equity, that is equality of opportunity and equality in treatment regardless of gender, and thereby accept what it takes to achieve the aim. They will commit because they understand. Such people are educated, formally or informally, to be learners and thereby can grasp what the organization is about. Learners know their own limits and the necessity to gain new knowledge and understanding for the challenges ahead.
3. How do such people come to AAUW? We invite them, encourage them, recruit them. We explain our mission. Often we recruit those we know best, those of our own circles. When we meet new people, we may be hesitant or embarrassed to ask about their degree status, and so we never get to the invitation stage. Eligibility based on mission removes that hurdle we have placed on ourselves. We will free ourselves to invite people when we have conversational clues about their interests, understandings, and willingness, not their degrees. Since a third of US adult women have degrees – about 60 million of them – our chances of gaining more degreed women is quite good.
4. What will membership based on mission do for us? As an organization we will live its mission and gain a new recognition. We champion equity and we regard others as deserving of equitable treatment regardless of their status. Others will see us as appreciative of every member for their contributions whatever they may be. We will have greater opportunity to work with those who share our aims, close at hand, rather than out there waiting to get it. Others will see us as extending the value of joining in the company of those who are breaking the barriers to social and economic equity for girls, women and their families.
Yes, AAUW is about education, as is our tradition. But education is understood in the bylaws, not as a pathway to membership, but a pathway to equity. We educate ourselves, we work for the education of others. If a degree was the only equivalence of education and having a degree brought all by itself both equity and a 60 million member AAUW organization, then we would be talking about another matter. Unfortunately, the degree by itself does not perform in so automatic a fashion. More is needed and working towards mission becomes the means to fulfill that need.
The Herban Sprawl Reply [herbansprawl@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 3:43 PM
To: rogdesk@charter.net
Subject: Re: Herban Sprawl comment
Roger,
I have a policy that I do not edit comments, except for spelling and grammar. Yours is good, but it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. If you can send me a comment that is a pithy 50 words or less, I'm happy to post it. I'm not soliciting long explanations. This is not an AAUW site. This is a woman's blog that is quite personal, highly opinionated and, from time to time, somewhat serious. If you can live with an abbreviated comment, then please do that for me.
If you doubt that this is a raging discussion, then you aren't listening. There are women in some states who will not renew their memberships if this change goes through. For myself, I think the
equity thing has gotten to be more important than the original intent of an organization for college-educated women to come together for mutual intellectual benefit and sociability. That's the reason I joined. That men are allowed to join doesn't bother me, but it wouldn't have been a priority for me had I been a member when that was decided.
Anyway, please feel free to resubmit something more appropriate as a brief comment.
The Herban Sprawler
Reflection and Response
Clearly I had held the wrong assumption. It seemed to me that when someone publicly raised a question that is a subject of controversy, they would want information on the topic. I troubled myself that I could legitimately condense what I had already said in a summary fashion into only fifty words. I therefore backed out as politely as I could.
From: Roger Sween [rogdesk@charter.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:47 AM
To: 'herbansprawl@yahoo.com'
Subject: RE: Herban Sprawl comment
Now that I have read the front end of your blog, I see that I missed completely the warning on size.
Sorry, but I assumed after reading the one portion that you were inviting discussion which to me means fullness.
Thank you for the invitation to reply with 50 words. I have mulled this for a day and come to the conclusion that my best approach is to treat the “Membership Issue” on my own blog where I can handle the complexity and length and keep it up to date.
My best to your endeavors.
--Roger
I am a member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), an organization that prides itself on learning, the study of issues, and civil discussion. Membership is currently putting these values to the test as it prepares to engage at its national convention in a full scale revision of its operating bylaws. Bylaws revision has come to us after the previous convention in 2007 voted overwhelmingly to restructure the organization and charge the Bylaws Committee to develop bylaws to carry out such restructuring.
After more than a year of work, publication of the bylaws and supporting material has opened considerable explanation, discussion and controversy. At the start, members have differed chiefly over a change in membership eligibility. What follows is one example of this interchange.
On April 27, 2009, Nancy Shoemaker of North Carolina informed me that she had seen an opposition piece dealing with the membership question on the blog Herban Sprawl. I decided to look at it and then to write a response. That piece follows.
What AAUW Is About
Thanks so much for raising these questions. I am grateful for every avenue to discuss them.
I am one of the people who joined AAUW out of attention to its aims, not because of any need to recognize my academic achievements. That was 20 years ago when AAUW changed membership eligibility to admit men. Since then, I have steeped myself in AAUW. I became the first male president of an AAUW branch and held other branch offices. I attended every state convention since 1989, including this last weekend. I served on state committees and under two state presidents as administrative assistant, a job broader than it sounds.
Consequently, I also became involved at the national level, attending association conventions from Providence (2003) onwards. I happen to be from a branch and state that for several years has worked for a more inclusive membership. In fact, our branch generated the bylaws amendment, further supported by AAUW Minnesota, to extend membership to those who have an associate or equivalent degree and AAUW passed in 2005.
I am now serving my fourth and final year on the AAUW Bylaws Committee, the group that revised the currently proposed bylaws for our restructured organization. We did as charged by the delegates at the 2007 convention to prepare bylaws for the restructured organization beginning July 2009. Many areas required action, but membership issues that have been under discussion for several years, attract the most controversy.
We are making changes for our organization in the 21st century. Other national organizations are doing the same. As the Bylaws Committee researched restructuring, we found lots of eagerness for information about positive changes, but few actual changes being made at the time except at the directorial level. The results of extensive member input in AAUW’s strategic planning process showed demand for a changed organization that will be leaner, efficient, and flexible, and up-to-date.
You are right that membership eligibility is an idea. I disagree that it is a bad idea, and I am not sure that the discussion of it is raging. Rage is a passionate, violent or insane anger, hardly a term that goes along with discussion. My experience or observation is that the discussion has become emotional because change is an emotional experience. Arguments pro the change and pro not making the change come from our understanding and our perspective. As we discuss, our shared aim is to widen our perspective and deepen our understanding so that we see the issue on mutual terms.
Membership eligibility is an integral part of who we are as an association. We come together in any association – family, church, a democracy, or whatever – for mutual benefit and benefit beyond our group. It is never exclusively about a person individually but about our togetherness. For AAUW and its bylaws, the membership question, as with all the rest of the bylaws proposals, stems from how we see our see our mission and the possible ways to achieve it. That mission, restated in our bylaws as purpose, is “AAUW advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.” In short, as we say, “Equity is still an issue.”
AAUW began in 1881 with a few college graduate women as a means to get together, support one another, and do things. Soon the newly organized group was doing projects that affected the provision of equal educational opportunity, raising funds, doing research, and granting money. They recruited new members, but at first only those members who graduated from colleges and universities that met AAUW’s criteria for provision of educational opportunities equal to men. In that specific regard, AAUW has long ago achieved one of its original aims. All of the activities begun by our association have evolved and expanded over the years.
Membership eligibility is one of our comprehensive bylaws changes, proposed chiefly to bring our membership in line with our mission. If our mission is equity, then our membership ought to be all those who support equity. Will this radically change membership? Not likely, but it could. Here are some reasons:
1. Who do we want to associate with? We want to associate with anyone who wants to work for equity for women and girls and in the manner we have traditionally done and by the activities on which we focus: advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research.
2. What kind of person is it that would join such an organization? Our associational mission is likely more demanding and long-range than many organizations. Potential members are those who know and understand the values of equity, that is equality of opportunity and equality in treatment regardless of gender, and thereby accept what it takes to achieve the aim. They will commit because they understand. Such people are educated, formally or informally, to be learners and thereby can grasp what the organization is about. Learners know their own limits and the necessity to gain new knowledge and understanding for the challenges ahead.
3. How do such people come to AAUW? We invite them, encourage them, recruit them. We explain our mission. Often we recruit those we know best, those of our own circles. When we meet new people, we may be hesitant or embarrassed to ask about their degree status, and so we never get to the invitation stage. Eligibility based on mission removes that hurdle we have placed on ourselves. We will free ourselves to invite people when we have conversational clues about their interests, understandings, and willingness, not their degrees. Since a third of US adult women have degrees – about 60 million of them – our chances of gaining more degreed women is quite good.
4. What will membership based on mission do for us? As an organization we will live its mission and gain a new recognition. We champion equity and we regard others as deserving of equitable treatment regardless of their status. Others will see us as appreciative of every member for their contributions whatever they may be. We will have greater opportunity to work with those who share our aims, close at hand, rather than out there waiting to get it. Others will see us as extending the value of joining in the company of those who are breaking the barriers to social and economic equity for girls, women and their families.
Yes, AAUW is about education, as is our tradition. But education is understood in the bylaws, not as a pathway to membership, but a pathway to equity. We educate ourselves, we work for the education of others. If a degree was the only equivalence of education and having a degree brought all by itself both equity and a 60 million member AAUW organization, then we would be talking about another matter. Unfortunately, the degree by itself does not perform in so automatic a fashion. More is needed and working towards mission becomes the means to fulfill that need.
The Herban Sprawl Reply [herbansprawl@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 3:43 PM
To: rogdesk@charter.net
Subject: Re: Herban Sprawl comment
Roger,
I have a policy that I do not edit comments, except for spelling and grammar. Yours is good, but it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. If you can send me a comment that is a pithy 50 words or less, I'm happy to post it. I'm not soliciting long explanations. This is not an AAUW site. This is a woman's blog that is quite personal, highly opinionated and, from time to time, somewhat serious. If you can live with an abbreviated comment, then please do that for me.
If you doubt that this is a raging discussion, then you aren't listening. There are women in some states who will not renew their memberships if this change goes through. For myself, I think the
equity thing has gotten to be more important than the original intent of an organization for college-educated women to come together for mutual intellectual benefit and sociability. That's the reason I joined. That men are allowed to join doesn't bother me, but it wouldn't have been a priority for me had I been a member when that was decided.
Anyway, please feel free to resubmit something more appropriate as a brief comment.
The Herban Sprawler
Reflection and Response
Clearly I had held the wrong assumption. It seemed to me that when someone publicly raised a question that is a subject of controversy, they would want information on the topic. I troubled myself that I could legitimately condense what I had already said in a summary fashion into only fifty words. I therefore backed out as politely as I could.
From: Roger Sween [rogdesk@charter.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:47 AM
To: 'herbansprawl@yahoo.com'
Subject: RE: Herban Sprawl comment
Now that I have read the front end of your blog, I see that I missed completely the warning on size.
Sorry, but I assumed after reading the one portion that you were inviting discussion which to me means fullness.
Thank you for the invitation to reply with 50 words. I have mulled this for a day and come to the conclusion that my best approach is to treat the “Membership Issue” on my own blog where I can handle the complexity and length and keep it up to date.
My best to your endeavors.
--Roger
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Index Links
For the up-to-date index to all blog contents on CeptsForm and companion blogs - CeptsForm Library, Concept Reviews, and Loria Series - go to CeptsFormIndex.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
The Big IDea
Whose Intelligence? Whose Design?
Polls are showing large or majority preference for the teaching of creationism or its current iteration, “intelligent design,” alongside the theory of evolution. However good this proposal, problems remain. Given that the presumption on teaching intends the public schools, the first question becomes, where in the curricula?
Popular understanding sees creationism (the act of God as creator) as the explanation for the natural order. Creationism accepts that species have always existed as they are at present and that the Biblical record is inerrant and sufficient on the subject. Intelligent design offers that though it took ages to get to the present state of existence, current species are too complex to be explainable by the accidents of adaptation and natural selection. This complexity requires, therefore, the originating agency of intelligence at work in the universe. Creationists and design theorists do not necessarily agree on the issue.
Likely, the proponents of side by side teaching would like these subjects taught in science classes. To do this requires the application of scientific principles to the discussion. Science is based on theories that must explain existing observation and data and be subject to publicly verifiable tests of evidence, experiment, prediction and disconfirmation. Creationism and intelligent design cannot hold up to scientific requirements because they argue from revelatory authority and conjectural inference that do not account for all the evidence except in dismissive ways. Put the duo to the test in science classes, and they would not hold up. Do their proponents want that? Public school science classes are inappropriate venues for topics that are not scientific. Of course, we could radically alter the basis of what constitutes science.
Another possibility for teaching creationism and design theory is in some social studies or history class where students explore the function and effect of ideas in civilization. This approach is certainly preferable to science classes, because here the particular requirements of science give way to how ideas stand and have stood through time on their own. Such ideas do not have to be valid, just widely and long held. Ideas of a Creator or of a Design Agent are of long standing, and here the tests are ones of reason and the rules of logic while the evidence is the effect or consequence that such ideas have in practice. Unfortunately, since the enlightenment period, these ideas have not fared well under examination.
Bishop Butler in The Analogy of Religion (1736) casts doubt on the assumption that the God known through nature can necessarily be the same God known through revelation. David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (posthumous, 1779) questions how things in the world can be comparable to the world as a whole; logic stretches beyond its bounds when one of the things to be compared is beyond the world. Immanuel Kant found in The Critique of Pure Reason (2nd ed., 1787) that the argument cannot lead to a theologically significant conclusion about God since the attributes of God are beyond causation. These are some of the major intellectual difficulties to overcome. Do the proponents of creationism and design want to come up against such critiques where they would not always fare well? Nevertheless, this approach to the origin alternatives seems a welcome way to explore the character and roots of modernity. Of course, we could otherwise radically alter the basis of what constitutes logic and reason.
Perhaps, the best place to teach these various views is in a world religions class since creationism and design agency are basically religious ideas if not phenomenological ones. Sadly, few schools have world religion classes, but this issue might be just the motivation our educational system needs to make comparative religion more widespread. Here tests for relevancy, coherence and consistency exist, but on the surface anyone’s claim to revelatory authority is potentially as good as anyone else’s claim. Creationism and intelligent design (to the extent it is religious) would have a level playing field. Put them alongside the variants in creation mythology from all times and all places and let them rub shoulders with the creation stories in Animism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Native American beliefs, Islam and whatever others are out there. Presumably creationists and design theorists would welcome this approach since one of the talking points for alongside studies is that it is good to consider alternative ideas.
Further, this approach also encompasses the varieties of Christian doctrine and teaching. Encounter a little Martin Luther or others among the reformers and soon discover that one of their reforms was to clear away the dominance of Aristotle (Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics) and the scholastics (Peter Lombard’s Sentences) from medieval theology and get to the scriptural root of the faith. They taught that we don’t need argument to find God; rather, God finds us through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. We do not see God because we first find a creator; rather, through God’s gracious action, the divine finds us, and therefore we see God as the providential author of all things. This alternative takes the security of faith away from dependency on good argument for, instead, faith in faith alone. What a happy resolution exists amid the whole confrontation between created nature and its evolution!
Because wide availability of religion courses remains unlikely, school children and their parents can pursue the side by side examination through study and reading. Good and wide reading sets up a useful dialogue within oneself, however neglected that process may be in practice. Where Darwin is the target, how many opponents have read his books and those of his successors? How many proponents have read them?
Alas, whenever the common aim is to prove the credibility of creationism and intelligent design against either science, reasonable thought, or sound belief, these ideas will always have a tough time. What merit creationism and design theory may have, they must win in the professional areas among scientists, philosophers and theologians before they become welcome and widespread subject matter in public schools.
When ideas cannot win out in the long run, they have to be propelled by political force or unexamined indoctrination. That, too, is an option, but certainly not a happy one in a democracy where harmless actions are to be the result of self-examination, scrupulous knowledge and not wish fulfillment.
_____
Roger Sween advocates the wary examination of received ideas by rigorous exploration of our cultural heritage through continuous, self-directed learning. For twenty years he repesented the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education on the Board of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom and maintains a large library to support his research and writing, a library that ‘has something to offend everyone.’
© 2005, 2009 by Roger Sween.
First published in The Carp #11 (2005), and here slightly revised, the article was written at a time when Intelligent Design was a strong force and even the President of the United States was saying school children should be allowed to consider the merits of the idea along side biological evolution in science classes. Though the ID proponents promised not to go away when they lost a court case, mass publicity attendant on them has disintegrated. Nevertheless, the ID and similar arguments on the appearance of species will continue to face the same arguments perilous to them as outlined above.
I invite substantive comment on the contents of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Polls are showing large or majority preference for the teaching of creationism or its current iteration, “intelligent design,” alongside the theory of evolution. However good this proposal, problems remain. Given that the presumption on teaching intends the public schools, the first question becomes, where in the curricula?
Popular understanding sees creationism (the act of God as creator) as the explanation for the natural order. Creationism accepts that species have always existed as they are at present and that the Biblical record is inerrant and sufficient on the subject. Intelligent design offers that though it took ages to get to the present state of existence, current species are too complex to be explainable by the accidents of adaptation and natural selection. This complexity requires, therefore, the originating agency of intelligence at work in the universe. Creationists and design theorists do not necessarily agree on the issue.
Likely, the proponents of side by side teaching would like these subjects taught in science classes. To do this requires the application of scientific principles to the discussion. Science is based on theories that must explain existing observation and data and be subject to publicly verifiable tests of evidence, experiment, prediction and disconfirmation. Creationism and intelligent design cannot hold up to scientific requirements because they argue from revelatory authority and conjectural inference that do not account for all the evidence except in dismissive ways. Put the duo to the test in science classes, and they would not hold up. Do their proponents want that? Public school science classes are inappropriate venues for topics that are not scientific. Of course, we could radically alter the basis of what constitutes science.
Another possibility for teaching creationism and design theory is in some social studies or history class where students explore the function and effect of ideas in civilization. This approach is certainly preferable to science classes, because here the particular requirements of science give way to how ideas stand and have stood through time on their own. Such ideas do not have to be valid, just widely and long held. Ideas of a Creator or of a Design Agent are of long standing, and here the tests are ones of reason and the rules of logic while the evidence is the effect or consequence that such ideas have in practice. Unfortunately, since the enlightenment period, these ideas have not fared well under examination.
Bishop Butler in The Analogy of Religion (1736) casts doubt on the assumption that the God known through nature can necessarily be the same God known through revelation. David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (posthumous, 1779) questions how things in the world can be comparable to the world as a whole; logic stretches beyond its bounds when one of the things to be compared is beyond the world. Immanuel Kant found in The Critique of Pure Reason (2nd ed., 1787) that the argument cannot lead to a theologically significant conclusion about God since the attributes of God are beyond causation. These are some of the major intellectual difficulties to overcome. Do the proponents of creationism and design want to come up against such critiques where they would not always fare well? Nevertheless, this approach to the origin alternatives seems a welcome way to explore the character and roots of modernity. Of course, we could otherwise radically alter the basis of what constitutes logic and reason.
Perhaps, the best place to teach these various views is in a world religions class since creationism and design agency are basically religious ideas if not phenomenological ones. Sadly, few schools have world religion classes, but this issue might be just the motivation our educational system needs to make comparative religion more widespread. Here tests for relevancy, coherence and consistency exist, but on the surface anyone’s claim to revelatory authority is potentially as good as anyone else’s claim. Creationism and intelligent design (to the extent it is religious) would have a level playing field. Put them alongside the variants in creation mythology from all times and all places and let them rub shoulders with the creation stories in Animism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Native American beliefs, Islam and whatever others are out there. Presumably creationists and design theorists would welcome this approach since one of the talking points for alongside studies is that it is good to consider alternative ideas.
Further, this approach also encompasses the varieties of Christian doctrine and teaching. Encounter a little Martin Luther or others among the reformers and soon discover that one of their reforms was to clear away the dominance of Aristotle (Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics) and the scholastics (Peter Lombard’s Sentences) from medieval theology and get to the scriptural root of the faith. They taught that we don’t need argument to find God; rather, God finds us through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. We do not see God because we first find a creator; rather, through God’s gracious action, the divine finds us, and therefore we see God as the providential author of all things. This alternative takes the security of faith away from dependency on good argument for, instead, faith in faith alone. What a happy resolution exists amid the whole confrontation between created nature and its evolution!
Because wide availability of religion courses remains unlikely, school children and their parents can pursue the side by side examination through study and reading. Good and wide reading sets up a useful dialogue within oneself, however neglected that process may be in practice. Where Darwin is the target, how many opponents have read his books and those of his successors? How many proponents have read them?
Alas, whenever the common aim is to prove the credibility of creationism and intelligent design against either science, reasonable thought, or sound belief, these ideas will always have a tough time. What merit creationism and design theory may have, they must win in the professional areas among scientists, philosophers and theologians before they become welcome and widespread subject matter in public schools.
When ideas cannot win out in the long run, they have to be propelled by political force or unexamined indoctrination. That, too, is an option, but certainly not a happy one in a democracy where harmless actions are to be the result of self-examination, scrupulous knowledge and not wish fulfillment.
_____
Roger Sween advocates the wary examination of received ideas by rigorous exploration of our cultural heritage through continuous, self-directed learning. For twenty years he repesented the Minnesota Association for Continuing Adult Education on the Board of the Minnesota Coalition for Intellectual Freedom and maintains a large library to support his research and writing, a library that ‘has something to offend everyone.’
© 2005, 2009 by Roger Sween.
First published in The Carp #11 (2005), and here slightly revised, the article was written at a time when Intelligent Design was a strong force and even the President of the United States was saying school children should be allowed to consider the merits of the idea along side biological evolution in science classes. Though the ID proponents promised not to go away when they lost a court case, mass publicity attendant on them has disintegrated. Nevertheless, the ID and similar arguments on the appearance of species will continue to face the same arguments perilous to them as outlined above.
I invite substantive comment on the contents of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Learn Up Close
We learn where we are.
Distance learning as an expression is a misnomer and by those words faulty in concept. Learning takes place immediate to learners, not distant from them. What the expression actually intends and ought to state instead is, learning at a distance from the originating resource.
In reality, “learning at a distance” has existed since the dawn of history when scribes first created writing and sent written knowledge down the street, over land and over sea. We can study the thinking of the pre-Socratics, dead for more than 2500 years and living then thousands of miles away. Contrary to some bit of techno-prejudice, we have not thought all these years of that study in its reach beyond time and space as “distance learning,” merely as learning.
The expression “distance learning” is one more insidiously pervasive example that the institutionalized dispenser of education whether school, teacher or other agency is superior to the individual learner without whom no learning is possible. A more exact term is distance education; that is, educational content provided to remote but connected learners by using some form of technology.
Distance education is the terminology used by such reference sources as the online EBSCO MegaFILE to article texts on the subject – 2,778 of them as of this date. The Library of Congress and all the world’s libraries that follow LC’s thesaurus of subject headings as a standard also employ distance education as the established term. You can Google “distance learning” in Wikipedia and the article you turn up is headed “distance education,” brought to you by automatic referral from the common, but flawed misnomer. For a recent update, see the text Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed., 2009).
No doubt, “distance learning” is amok in current popular and professional use. One professional organization, “if your work involves helping people learn wherever they may be,” is United States Distance Learning Association. The Center for Distance Learning, affiliated with the City Colleges of Chicago offers 90 courses in a wide range of disciplines. The Center for Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University has existed since 1991. Presumably, the term is not widely questioned and unlikely to go away very soon.
Distance education as we know it today is an outgrowth of correspondence courses, the first on record having originated in 1728 as a method of teaching short hand with delivery by mail. With new technologies, especially electronic ones – radio, television, and computers – educators have adapted each to enrolling students and classes at a distance from the teacher. Now whole schools operate online and the Minnesota State College and Universities, the state’s public higher education system outside the University of Minnesota, has announced its aim of delivering 25% of its classes by distance education.
Of course, being in a class online, however valuable, fails equivalence to being in a class face to face. Asynchronous participation replaces simultaneity: students reply to one another through postings, not interactive conversations. Though formats vary, classes brought together online require time shifting and likely a greater commitment to pay attention to all the other participants, not just those who participate in the limits of class time. As participation levels increase, in part due to individualization and the comfort of greater anonymity, students can demand in total far more effort from the teacher. These burdens lead to how courses are structured and what is required.
Students will discover what suits their lives, schedules and psyches. They ought also attend to what satisfies their need and desire to learn. The learning counts most of all, not the distance or the technological abolition of distance.
_____
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This article first appeared on the writing platform Helium.com and is here revised.
I welcome substantive comments on the content of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Distance learning as an expression is a misnomer and by those words faulty in concept. Learning takes place immediate to learners, not distant from them. What the expression actually intends and ought to state instead is, learning at a distance from the originating resource.
In reality, “learning at a distance” has existed since the dawn of history when scribes first created writing and sent written knowledge down the street, over land and over sea. We can study the thinking of the pre-Socratics, dead for more than 2500 years and living then thousands of miles away. Contrary to some bit of techno-prejudice, we have not thought all these years of that study in its reach beyond time and space as “distance learning,” merely as learning.
The expression “distance learning” is one more insidiously pervasive example that the institutionalized dispenser of education whether school, teacher or other agency is superior to the individual learner without whom no learning is possible. A more exact term is distance education; that is, educational content provided to remote but connected learners by using some form of technology.
Distance education is the terminology used by such reference sources as the online EBSCO MegaFILE to article texts on the subject – 2,778 of them as of this date. The Library of Congress and all the world’s libraries that follow LC’s thesaurus of subject headings as a standard also employ distance education as the established term. You can Google “distance learning” in Wikipedia and the article you turn up is headed “distance education,” brought to you by automatic referral from the common, but flawed misnomer. For a recent update, see the text Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed., 2009).
No doubt, “distance learning” is amok in current popular and professional use. One professional organization, “if your work involves helping people learn wherever they may be,” is United States Distance Learning Association. The Center for Distance Learning, affiliated with the City Colleges of Chicago offers 90 courses in a wide range of disciplines. The Center for Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University has existed since 1991. Presumably, the term is not widely questioned and unlikely to go away very soon.
Distance education as we know it today is an outgrowth of correspondence courses, the first on record having originated in 1728 as a method of teaching short hand with delivery by mail. With new technologies, especially electronic ones – radio, television, and computers – educators have adapted each to enrolling students and classes at a distance from the teacher. Now whole schools operate online and the Minnesota State College and Universities, the state’s public higher education system outside the University of Minnesota, has announced its aim of delivering 25% of its classes by distance education.
Of course, being in a class online, however valuable, fails equivalence to being in a class face to face. Asynchronous participation replaces simultaneity: students reply to one another through postings, not interactive conversations. Though formats vary, classes brought together online require time shifting and likely a greater commitment to pay attention to all the other participants, not just those who participate in the limits of class time. As participation levels increase, in part due to individualization and the comfort of greater anonymity, students can demand in total far more effort from the teacher. These burdens lead to how courses are structured and what is required.
Students will discover what suits their lives, schedules and psyches. They ought also attend to what satisfies their need and desire to learn. The learning counts most of all, not the distance or the technological abolition of distance.
_____
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This article first appeared on the writing platform Helium.com and is here revised.
I welcome substantive comments on the content of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Reading Life
Required Reading?
Actually, it only makes lasting sense to require reading of ourselves.
Of course, secondary schools and institutions of higher learning do require off-term reading when it suits their purposes and they find value in it. Students, enrolled in these institutions or such programs as honors, independent study, or advanced placement would know in advance and willingly embrace the requirements to read. The question is whether all learning institutions ought to require collateral reading. Practically, not all can; a reading requirement will not fit all purposes. But I will say, schools of any sort should expect their students to be readers and therefore encourage them in the reading life.
At basis, reading is a desirable skill, but that skill is varied. How we employ reading depends upon what we mean by it. Reading Wikipedia articles is one thing; reading War and Peace another. Reading, we should realize, is developmental; that is, we improve our reading ability and range of reading skills by reading. Yet, we leave to each individual learner to pursue the skills they identify as needed to succeed in life and those that they most cherish as enjoyable, enlightening, and meaningful to their psyches. From a humanistic point of view, reading energizes and furnishes the whole person and to read at the widest range is the ultimate practice of the learning life.
Success in reading may be defined as not only the ability to decode text, but the habit of using reading to continue reaching out to knowledge and experience through reading. As with my parents, one read mostly novels, about two a week most of her 90-year reading life, the other read primarily newspapers and magazines, but daily. Both were “well read” in their own terms, the book reader less outreaching than the reader of periodicals.
Someone once said, if you want to be a reader, chose grandparents that are readers. Many of us can credit the reading of family members to our own enjoyment and habits of reading. In my own study of hundreds of biographies to discover successful readers, I found the family example can help but does not even have the same influence on all brothers and sisters. Highly successful readers like the innovative travel writer Bruce Chatwin or the photographer Diane Arbus and poet Howard Nemerov, sister and brother, all became successful in spite of their parental examples. Reading often seems a highly personal phenomenon, one likely more suited to certain psyches and lifestyle preferences than to sheer ability.
For the successful reader in ability and habit, the ideal learning environment would be a broadly-stocked library with a few tutorial asides. Teachers, well-read themselves, would question, challenge, mentor and suggest connections to the readers they tutored. Readers would gather with one another under a tutor’s facilitation to probe questions and exchange thinking based upon the reading they had made their own.
Why is it then that though not all schools and colleges require collateral reading when almost all require attendance at lectures? Universities began in the days when books were expensive and rare. With the invention of movable type and commercial printing, the cost of books and other texts has fallen. Why then has the lecture system proliferated? Does the expansive lecture tradition mean that reading as the flexible and individualized vehicle to learning is for those few willing to do the work of reading? Reading is, after all, work.
Reading takes time. Since we all have the same 24 hours a day, reading time means scheduled time. The problem is not that we are busy; we can all be busy and most are. The question becomes busy at what. We choose to read by scheduling time to read which means giving up something else, often something distracting from the necessities of self-development and learning. For this reason, most readers will read by choice, not by requirement, and the poverty of contemporary life is not the inability to read but the refusal to follow through on the ability one has.
So read. Besides, you might as well be discriminating. Over 60 million books have been published since the invention of movable type.
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This piece first appeared on Helium.com in answer to the question, “Should Colleges Require Outside Reading of their Students?” I have broadened the response in this revision.
I welcome substantive comments on the contents of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Actually, it only makes lasting sense to require reading of ourselves.
Of course, secondary schools and institutions of higher learning do require off-term reading when it suits their purposes and they find value in it. Students, enrolled in these institutions or such programs as honors, independent study, or advanced placement would know in advance and willingly embrace the requirements to read. The question is whether all learning institutions ought to require collateral reading. Practically, not all can; a reading requirement will not fit all purposes. But I will say, schools of any sort should expect their students to be readers and therefore encourage them in the reading life.
At basis, reading is a desirable skill, but that skill is varied. How we employ reading depends upon what we mean by it. Reading Wikipedia articles is one thing; reading War and Peace another. Reading, we should realize, is developmental; that is, we improve our reading ability and range of reading skills by reading. Yet, we leave to each individual learner to pursue the skills they identify as needed to succeed in life and those that they most cherish as enjoyable, enlightening, and meaningful to their psyches. From a humanistic point of view, reading energizes and furnishes the whole person and to read at the widest range is the ultimate practice of the learning life.
Success in reading may be defined as not only the ability to decode text, but the habit of using reading to continue reaching out to knowledge and experience through reading. As with my parents, one read mostly novels, about two a week most of her 90-year reading life, the other read primarily newspapers and magazines, but daily. Both were “well read” in their own terms, the book reader less outreaching than the reader of periodicals.
Someone once said, if you want to be a reader, chose grandparents that are readers. Many of us can credit the reading of family members to our own enjoyment and habits of reading. In my own study of hundreds of biographies to discover successful readers, I found the family example can help but does not even have the same influence on all brothers and sisters. Highly successful readers like the innovative travel writer Bruce Chatwin or the photographer Diane Arbus and poet Howard Nemerov, sister and brother, all became successful in spite of their parental examples. Reading often seems a highly personal phenomenon, one likely more suited to certain psyches and lifestyle preferences than to sheer ability.
For the successful reader in ability and habit, the ideal learning environment would be a broadly-stocked library with a few tutorial asides. Teachers, well-read themselves, would question, challenge, mentor and suggest connections to the readers they tutored. Readers would gather with one another under a tutor’s facilitation to probe questions and exchange thinking based upon the reading they had made their own.
Why is it then that though not all schools and colleges require collateral reading when almost all require attendance at lectures? Universities began in the days when books were expensive and rare. With the invention of movable type and commercial printing, the cost of books and other texts has fallen. Why then has the lecture system proliferated? Does the expansive lecture tradition mean that reading as the flexible and individualized vehicle to learning is for those few willing to do the work of reading? Reading is, after all, work.
Reading takes time. Since we all have the same 24 hours a day, reading time means scheduled time. The problem is not that we are busy; we can all be busy and most are. The question becomes busy at what. We choose to read by scheduling time to read which means giving up something else, often something distracting from the necessities of self-development and learning. For this reason, most readers will read by choice, not by requirement, and the poverty of contemporary life is not the inability to read but the refusal to follow through on the ability one has.
So read. Besides, you might as well be discriminating. Over 60 million books have been published since the invention of movable type.
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This piece first appeared on Helium.com in answer to the question, “Should Colleges Require Outside Reading of their Students?” I have broadened the response in this revision.
I welcome substantive comments on the contents of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
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