Tweet
First, two disclaimers: 1) I’ve never formally or informally studied either rhetoric, nor logic (except for mathematical logic). I suppose one could be charitable and say that I absorbed a bit of logic, informally, via participation in the James Randi forum.* 2) I have only a scant knowledge of the history of education, mostly picked up, I think, from hearing Noam Chomsky describe the desire of elites – decades before Reagan became president – to use the school system to turn out good, obedient factory workers. Consequently, I’m not a good candidate for writing a diary such as this. However, I don’t see diaries like this being written, much at all, in most all of the political forums – left or right – that I visit. If you are knowledgeable about these subjects, I invite you to write about them.
===========================================================
There was a very interesting comment in a diary at Old Elm Tree, called Conservatives killed the liberal arts, which supports a growing conviction, in myself, that activists should be looking to re-introduce elements of a classical education into school curricula, and should also be making some sort of concerted effort to educate adults along these lines, also. The diary itself was unimpressive, yet another example of “blame conservatives for everything” that one finds so often in lefty blogs. My guess is that the author has succumbed to the lefty side of cartoon stereotyping that infests the self-imagined politically aware, here in the US. However, the following comment was interesting, and inspiring:
Can I add to your fine comments, that whatever subjects are taught, the curriculum has been carefully “refined” so that no longer do students study rhetoric, poetry, or dialectics in terms of having basic logical foundation.
My father understood all those things. Born in 1911, he could pull apart the most supposedly logically conceived piece of rhetoric, and if there was no logic or truth in it, tear the argument to shreds. This from a man, who due to the Depression, never got beyond HS (with exception being accounting classes needed to get CPA license.)
(emphasis mine)
The “fine comment” that this comment refers to was also more interesting and valuable than the diary, itself:
I actually disagree with this.
…..
But there is another observation. If a liberal arts education is so important, why isn’t it stressed at the high school or general education level, which focuses only on “collage only” courses? Why isn’t there more effort to present liberal arts to the general public outside the venue of the university; such as in the form of documentaries or published books?
And just what is a “liberal arts” education any way? Is this something that has a clear definition? Are conservatives correct in simply calling it “liberal indoctrination?” Maybe because of the changing economy, it’s time we start looking towards more efficient education. What about other modes of education, such as strong social education, which adds emphases on art, music, dance, and social interactions.
Rhetoric and logic are considered part of a liberal arts education, whose roots go back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Believe it or not, there are conservatives that would probably die from joy if rhetoric and logic were re-introduced into school curricula. While I think it’s fair to say that ignorant, brain washed “ditto-head” type conservatives outnumber more rational, educated conservatives, I would question the appropriateness of calling such people “conservative”, to begin with. Yeah, they’re conservative in some senses of the word, but even ignoring the ignorance factor, “conservative” does not have a static definition. Noam Chomsky has written on this point, but I don’t want to look up references.
The phrase “liberal arts” is probably part of what’s causing the problem, here. Liberalism goes all the way back to the enlightenment, but Ancient Greeks and Romans’ arguing logic and philosophy go back further, still. How, then, could “pre-liberal” civilizations embrace part of what used to constitute a liberal arts education?
Well, this ‘paradox’ just emphasizes the need for a modicum of knowledge, and the ability to think, the need to be aware of nuance and ambiguities and human language, and the desirability to not be brain-washed into ‘thinking’ in stereotypes.
I’ve long been convinced of the fact that activists need to focus on the systemic rot that afflicts America, since “no good deed goes unpunished” in a society that’s been so thoroughly corrupted by financial interests. However, in recent years, I’ve increasingly become convinced that Americans lack the intellectual capacity to make deep changes in society, with any sort of rapidity.
I’m only a decade away from retirement age, and thus likely older than most people reading this. However, in spite of my high school “liberal arts” education occuring before Reagan became President, I myself was never educated in logic and rhetoric – these subjects were not availabe in my high school, which I considered pretty decent. Quite honestly, I don’t recall anybody of my generation telling me that they had studied either rhetoric or logic in high school. It sure seems to me that the dysfunctional intellectual roots of our current malaise go back much further than the “conservative” boogey-men that American lefties love to hate. Better to ask Noam Chomsky about this subject, than rely on clueless rants in “progressive” blogs…..
=================
P.S.: I used to listen to Thom Hartmann, before his shilling for the Democrats became intolerable. Hartmann often reminded his audience that Reagan acted to take civics out of the Amerian classroom, but again, I don’t recall getting much of an education in “civics”, other than the basics of how the American system of government is supposed to work. If anybody is knowledgeable about the “when” and “what” about how civics was taken out of the classroom, please post.
* I have a very low opinion of most of the serial “debunkers”, there. They tend to be insulting, plus full of irrational ‘arguments’, themselves. As a group, they tend to use rational arguments, when available, and abandon them just as readily, when not available.
========== Update ================
An interesting comment, at Amazon.com, to the book The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric [Paperback], is as follows:
Why wasn’t this taught when I was in school??? January 19, 2004
By Michael Freeman
Format:Paperback
I wholeheartedly recommend this book; however, it’s probably so different from anything you were taught in school that it might be difficult to incorporate anything into your writing style.
I was never taught logic in school–either high school or college. Thus, I found the sections on logic very interesting. The author describes every logical argument you could think of in detail, and (the editor) provides examples for most. Not easy reading, though–I found myself having to go back and re-read/study portions routinely.As an aside, I think this book, unintentionally, does a lot to point out the failures of modern government-controlled schools. The “trivium” should be taught to all grade-school students.
(emphasis mine)
40 Comments
Respectfully, unless you are the author of those posts at Old Elm, you are violating the copyright of the authors.
Hmmm. I’m no lawyer, but if I violated a copyright, I would think that I violated the copyright of Old Elm Tree, not the commenters.
I just sent an email to their admin, asking about this. In the meantime, I’ll cut down the length of the quotes.
Either way, the FDL Terms of Service request limiting quotes from other locations to a couple of paragraphs max:
I would think that goes with comments from their sites as well
It’s quite frustrating to me that so much of what you might call an education in the ‘liberal arts’ or ‘classical education’ has come to be characterized as studying the legacy of “dead white men”.
It’s such an effective slur, painted with such a broad-brush, that the resulting stigma can be summoned almost instantly, and in almost any social context to put an end to the discussion, which is often understood as ‘winning’ the debate rather than stifling further discussion.
In this context, many seem to think of The Enlightenment as the caldron in which our white-racist empire was cooked up, as opposed to a time when people threw off the shackles of superstition and oppressive religious dogma, and began to have faith in the ability of their own minds to understand the world and guide their actions.
It seems to me that the whole notion of Modernism is treated as if it has been effectively refuted, and is now to be thrown upon the trash-heap, and with it all belief in a gradual improvement in the human condition through the processes of government and civil administration.
I think the effort to convince the people that government is the enemy, is very much an effort to obscure, and defeat any remaining memory of government as the solution to the problems that are too big to be solved by individuals.
Liberal education is the most likely place most people would become acquainted with the notion that government has been a force for good, or that working for the common good does not result in oppression of the individual.
It makes perfect sense that a people who believe Ayn Rand is a profit of some sort would view a Liberal Arts education as a foolish waste of time and by the way, money.
It”s immensely frustrating to be opposed by progressives who may not understand it, but are armed very similar world view.
Would you say that there is precious little discussion about positive aspects of Western intellectual history, within progressives blogs, and also lacking education of such within the school system experienced by most Americans? If so, what would you suggest be done about this?
Being partial to reasonable conspiracy theories, I tend not to view ‘reforms’ which, I believe, have led to a loss of the public of what might have been a considerable capacity to think, as a result of accidents of history. E.g., even the world of art was manipulated by the CIA in an effort to strike some blows for capitalism, during the Cold War. From
The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited
by James Petras
The CIA has only been around since 1947, and, I believe, the dumbing down of Americans began well before then. However, the CIA’s willingness to corrupt American academics, early on in its history, is demonstrated, and of course they didn’t expect the academics to keep their opinions, to themselves. They wanted to ‘infect the public mind’ with their bought and paid-for capitalist-friendly memes.
Many good sociologists have investigated the arena of issues your post comprehends.
In a nutshell. Liberal thought is taught to children to question ‘why’ something is so. The foundation of the Enlightenment.
Conservative thought is taught to children to use only memory and process to seek the correct answer to a question that is given them, they must just accept it as so. Just like Sunday school. No whys, wherefores, or grey areas are suggested; the essence of dogmatic population control, centuries old.
The conservatively trained adult, facilitates an acceptance of authority. Their comparative docility makes the best soldiers, factory workers, consumers and Faux News watchers. They are accustomed to being told what to think and do.
The 30′s had too many educated people asking why; the illiterate agreed that unions were for the regular folks and followed.
You and I were taught under a Dewey progressive philosophy, that emphasized that logic is the field of inquiry and should be encouraged in children. Those children questioned Vietnam. A population who can justifiably think to challenge the economic order is too great a threat, obviously, liberal rhetoric and logical thinking had to be removed.
Reagan reforms removed much of our children’s ability to later inquire into the basis of our MIIC and neoliberal economic policies, as intended.
60% of todays population are intellectually incapacitated into naivete. And so it goes.
—lifted from wiki’s “education reform.”
Good stuff for a Sunday morning thought exercise for those 40% who can still really think. Rec’d
The liberal arts, including rhetoric and logic, are intended to teach people HOW to think. This is what Socrates and others did in ancient Athens. If people know how to think, they are harder to bamboozle, which is why authoritarian regimes of all kinds are opposed to the teaching of the liberal arts.
So, our current fascistic regime places emphasis on teaching students only WHAT to think. Reading, writing, and arithmetic learned by rote. Such learning can be measured by standardized tests, while rhetoric and persuasive skills are arts that cannot be measured like that.
History is replete with examples of rulers doing their best to stamp out the liberal arts, from the oligarchical government imposed on Athens by Sparta after the Peloponnesian War to Mao to the current American crusade against thinking that got going again in the 1960′s as a response to the antiwar protests and the counterculture, which were centered around university campuses.
Obviously, those kids were exposed to bad influences, thought their parents. So let’s get rid of those bad influences. Reagan saw a chance to attack the liberal arts, and thinking Americans have been on the defensive ever since.
Boy, I can’t imagine that’s so, dakine. From Findlaw on copyrights (the wiki has the same section:
“The “fair use” of a copyrighted work, including use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. Copyright owners are, by law, deemed to consent to fair use of their works by others.”
Just my guess that it’s relevant, but…
Some questions:
1) how was it “removed”?
2) while I remember the relative open-mindedness of my high school days as a plus, nevertheless
a) there was no classical training in logic, rhetoric, dialectics even available
b) teachers did not seriously question the ugly underside of politics, which brings into question the legitimacy of the American government, as it actually conducts itself
3) the way I read Watt4Bob, he is addressing mental brain farts of liberals. It’s not likely going to be conservatives that refer to Plato and Voltaire as “dead white men”, who have nothing to offer us, after all. How do you explain the miseducation of those who have ended up “liberal”, but completely unmoored to Western intellectual foundations? Are they mental mutants because they had a “conservative” education, but their innate “liberal” tendencies forced them to transcend their conditioning? Or did they (as I think is common) have a distorted “liberal” education – perhaps mucked about by the plutocrat-serving CIA – which is a weird amalgam of mental fuzziness, identity politics, and lack of critical thinking (so, “conservative” in a sense that you are stating).
I live in NJ – not a red state! We may be glossing over very real differences in educational systems…
This sounds like what Thom Hartmann is claiming, but I’m skeptical. As noted, I never had a course in what was labeled “civics”. Just how did Reagan & Co. pull off this trick?
FWIW, I’ve heard a lot of criticism of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” re “teaching to the test”. Now, that is a recipe for shutting down critical thinking. Consequently, I have less problem accepting your view of (apparently widespread) “conservative” education, since Bush II.
What about before Bush II?
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d dispute this statement.
Here’s two questions for you.
1) Was logic and rhetoric EVER widely taught in American high schools?
2) Was logic and rhetoric EVER widely taught in American colleges?
As I’ve openly admitted, I have scant knowledge of the history of education in the US.
Yes, I would agree.
The ‘Old, Dead, White Men’ meme has such strong resonance with women, minorities, and others who have experienced, and are trying to overcome oppression, that it has become a very useful weapon for those who would divide and conquer us.
The ‘Old, Dead, White Men’ meme deserves a more critical consideration IMHO.
What to do about this?
I don’t know what we can do about it, but I would start by fighting to lessen the influence of the Texas State Board of Education on America’s school books, and thus on the broader curriculum.
I hate to say it, but the damage may be done.
How do you suppose this meme became widespread? One doesn’t expect American conservatives – who are likely to be white and male – to put down ‘Old, Dead, White Men’. After all, they resemble ‘Old, Dead, White Men’ in 2 of 3 categories, and will soon enough resemble them in all 3! :-)
Do you agree that it’s at least plausible that this anti-intellectual meme was injected into the public mind via corrupted lefty intellectuals? I don’t think lefty citizens are in the habit of imbibing wisdom from the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Even in Texas, I doubt that the school system teaches contempt for ‘Old, Dead White Men’. They did not independently stumble upon commonly held memes, by accident. These memes came from somewhere, and were reinforced by some means.
I, for one, don’t see a big leap between corrupting the art world, as the CIA attempted (and doubtless succeeded, to some extent) to do, and introducing a huge fissure amongst self-identified liberals, while getting a two-fer by degrading the ability of liberals to think rationally. And I expect (by just drawing analogies) that “influentials” will be the chosen vectors of anti-’Dead, White Men’ memes.
Well, I’m going to suggest that the Progressive Radio Network, which continues to broaden is large array of programs, allowing for ever greater variety of perspectives, take a crack or two at this fundamental problem. If citizens can’t think their way out of a paper bag, they are part of the problem of a grossly dysfunctional democracy.
As much damage as has been done, things can always get worse.
BTW, I read about some white liberal dude who pulled his kid out of the public school system in Montclair, NJ. Montclair is said to be a liberal enclave of Manhattanites, that want to live in a suburb.
His reason? His kid’s school was basically teaching contempt for white people. I don’t remember any details, but it was worse than dissing ‘Old White Men’ intellectuals.
I wouldn’t say that Montclair is typical of NJ, though. Again, my knowledge of these matters is scant.
I think it ought to be pointed out that there’s a bit of unfair rhetoric in your post.
You refer to conservatives as “conservatives”
You refer to liberals as “lefties”
Why use a diminutive only for those on the left?
On the one hand you say this:
On the other hand you say this:
Why is it that behavior you find objectionable on the right can be dismissed as coming from those you characterize as not being genuine conservatives, but you offer no such possibility for behavior you find objectionable on the left?
Here, I think, you a succumbing to the logical fallacy known as “No True Scotsman” and compounding that by applying it in a one-sided manner.
Tj
Firedoglake.com states it correctly. The author retains a copyright in the work he or she created and posted and the board gets to use the work for board purposes.
Criticism means something like a book review or a movie review, where small percentages of the work are quoted in a long review of mostly original work, including an originally written summary of the book, and just enough so that the reader has enough information to understand the review.
Surely, a newspaper publishing a book review has no right to distribute xeroxes of the book so the reader knows exactly what the reviewer is talking about without the critic having to trouble himself or herself writing an original summary.
With a post, which is short to begin with, the respectful and lawful course would be a very brief quote and a link, or better yet a link and whatever originally written description the critic of the post wishes to write himself or herself.
The Copyright Act is a long one that has been interpreted in many, many cases. You need that context to properly understand a short excerpt from the Act.
Again, respectfully, if someone makes a legal statement to you and you are not a lawyer, why do you assume you are correct without even googling or checking what firedoglake has to say about it?
I googled and the very first hit I got confirms my original post to you, as well as the firedoglake.com statement about the author retaining the copyright. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2900/who-controls-the-content-on-an-internet-message-board
Otherwise, I could not copy and paste my own post from another board. And if I had published something in a magazine, retaining the copyright as to future publication, which is typical now, I would lose my copyright in it just by posting on a message board.
Well, I tend to view the low-logic, low-introspection, anti-intellectual citizens, of both left and right persuasions, as being dangerous to democracy. In no way do I consider liberals as monolithic, either.
As far as allowing for a differentiation of liberals into genuine liberals vs. non-genuine liberals, I have no great objection to that. E.g., I do tend to think of liberals like Noam Chomsky as more ‘genuine’. (Yes, I know he has some anarchistic beliefs.) However, I can tell you that I don’t have a particularly good feel for it, either, within the lefty blogosphere that I experience. That’s because that while the paleo-conservative authors at Chronicles Magazine will make a point of differentiating themselves from neo-cons, fundamentalist conservatives, and other flavors of cons that may awaken their ire, front-paged authors at blogs like FDL and dailykos don’t tend to make such a distinction. (Non front pagers are a different matter.)
In any event, I’m mostly concerned about the lack of rationality within the ranks of both lefties and righties, not grading subgroups of them as to who is genuine vs. who is not genuine. I take it as a given the citizens will differ in their core values, and thus SHOULD arrive at different conclusions regarding any number of issues.
It’s the arriving a conclusion which is not really a conclusion – since the ‘thinking’ was basically an injected rationalization, with little critical thinking in evidence – that bothers me.
I am not particularly concerned about differentiating “genuine” from non-genuine. Methinks that you are making too much about basically a throwaway comment.
I am concerned about throwing a spotlight on irrationality across the political spectrum, and asking others for their input as to how this came about. I think I’ve been clear enough about my concerns, no?
What do you think about level of rationality of those who typically self-identify themselves as right or left? Do you think they would have benefited from a classical education? What can you tell us about how educational deficits were brought about. (Certainly, Reagan had no magic want to wave, to make us all dumb.) If so, what should we, as US citizens, be doing to rectify this?
Perhaps you are not interested in the main intent of this diary, but I am not interested in nuances of my descriptions of lefties and righties.
(emphasis mine)
Physician, heal thyself?
You ask that I address the main thrust of your post, and that’s a fair request. Without real data to back it up, I would tend to agree with you that the basic tenets of critical thinking received less attention and even opposition in higher education in the 60′s and 70′s.
But this is something that calls for harder data and a more incisive analysis.
Is that still the case? (I actually suspect it is, but this is something that is actually quantifiable – you could gather numbers on how many courses in logic and classics are and have been taught over time)
Is the root cause of it “lefty” approaches, or do other factors come into play – a change in education focus towards more job training types of concerns for example?
You aren’t backing up your implications with enough real evidence.
But getting back to the beginning of my comment – I pointed out some rather loose application on your part of both logic and rhetoric because if you are going to critique the left on it’s supposed abandonment of logic and rhetoric in the classroom ( and the subtle implication that the left lacks those skills in general), then you are obligated to apply some rigor in those areas in your own arguments.
It just dawned on me that I’d read another analysis once, that posited a sort of demographic shift in the make-up of the population of teachers, a shift from containing a high number of well-educted upper-class women, including a rather high percentage of what used to be called spinsters.
These upper-class women had received rather rich educations in what we’re calling the classical style, and had a rather strong commitment to what was called ‘noblesse oblige‘.
Then sometime between the world-wars, or a little later, the ranks of teachers began to include ever-increasing numbers of working class women who not only had more pedestrian educations in general, but also retained the prejudices of the working-class.
These were the teachers who tended to go along with leaders who encouraged the pumping out of ‘good employees’ rather than educated citizens, and often saw their students through racist colored glasses.
1) How was it removed?
What you are asking is how did we change education that originally enabled truth seeking, into one that emphasized empiricism of fact verification, with no residual humanistic psychological or moral interpretation.
That was done by teaching to a test of facts and expectation of an empiricist expression of writing that doesn’t permit much speculation to get the good grade. Students regurgitate the teacher input, not demonstrate their grasp of a potential moral counter argument to the expected answer.
This is how you dehumanize an “other” into a quantitative expression, devoid of flesh, blood and pain, thereby suppressing student empathy or sympathy to the excuse de jure for an individual’s complaint of their current economic condition. To misdirect the guilt of an agent away from the truth at issue by offering an intervening fact. A fact that can thus be accepted that sufficiently supersedes our other wise conception of justice, is the correct answer for the test.
It goes to the import of my “nut shell’ first sentence: that liberal education is one that encourages the child’s natural curiosity to ask Why. That three letter word is the fountain head of all knowledge, all truth; it is the dogma killer that any structure of political control must either justify itself by, or suppress the conclusions drawn, or suppress the freedom of conception to even consider asking the question ‘why’ in the first place, by empiricising the education process. To countenance the student asking why is liberal, restriction of it’s higher intellectual potential is conservative.
2) You didn’t need direct lessons of rhetoric or logic if your teachers, who were trained to allow the students to question ‘why’ something is so.
Truth, again, is the underlying basis of true or false but is not quantifiable as such. The truth distinction brings the moral imperative of right/wrong into a human dimension of the intellect’s consideration. Liberally encouraged, conservatively not.
That human consideration is conservatively taught to be ignored or to maintain its ambiguity of its importance as much as possible. “Thats not on the test” is usually sufficient to stop discussion. That statement was never uttered by my teachers who encouraged class participation.
My teachers would say “that there was no such thing as a bad question.” That is what has been ‘adjusted’ by the current methods of teaching, that there are questions that take us “off track,” or “don’t have time for,” is sufficient to maintain empiricised control of student intellectual development.
3) You bring into question latent IQ and parental influence to continue the Dewey methods that they had been exposed to, that they thereby encouraged the curiosity of their own children and valued reading as self education. Any means of new ideations, that develop the student’s intellectual exposure to the world in any form the student direction of the day wished to go, was fine.
I would suggest the liberally taught parents had more to do with countering the schools conservative methodology, hence liberalism’s conceptions of ‘why’ will last intergenerationally.
I’ve used the adjective ‘empercised’ several times, so I want to explain its importance to this comment. Empiricism is to understand or gain knowledge using the out-side in direction. It emphasizes that reality exists externally, not emotively or internally. Everything is objective and that any innate subjectivity is questionable; as so, it deemphasizes where truth abides. It thereby can suppress our understanding or expectation of truth and justice. It doesn’t recognize innate or spiritual moral foundations of what a human is, and therefor, it subtly dehumanizes. Therein is the societal flaw and it’s insidious nature.
One example: Obama the other day said that the financiers didn’t break any laws when they wrecked the global economy. He may well be correct in the empirical world that has been taught into 60% of the population as the dominant external thought pattern, that can supersede the truth and justice of the matter.
He could well have said that there is no justice in this world, if the facts intercede the conception. That our factual or empirical truisms, outweighs our conceptions of truth and justice, so “get over it” you other 40% that still can think. And so it goes.
I have admitted my scant knowledge of the history of education, more than once, and furthermore stated in my disclaimer that
and
Furthermore, I have invited those people who are more knowledgeable on these subjects, than myself, to write on them.
If you are correct that my own statements lack logic, then given my lack of formal (and informal) study of logic, I will have supported the general notion (even if only slightly) that such study is highly desirable, since it is true even of myself. However, if you want to go further and claim that I cannot make an accurate statement about lefties’ (participating in blogs that I read) lack of rationality, after having read so many comments on lefty blogs which don’t pass the laugh test, I disagree.
I have suggested that abandoning logic and rhetoric in the classroom is the work of Mandarins, supporting a plutocratic elite that don’t want critical thinkers. I view citizens who self-identify as left, victims of such an abandonment, as, in fact, I view citizens who self-identify as right as victims, also.
I have drawn an analogy with the CIA’s mucking up of the art world. Do I anywhere say that the CIA is “left”? No, I do not, any more than I say that the CIA is “right”. The relevant bifurcation is “up” and “down” (or “1%” and “99%”, as we tend to say, nowadays).
I do believe that CIA and/or associated puppet masters of American culture have indeed made efforts to corrupt both left-leaning and right-leaning intelligentsia. Re the left side of things, see The Left Gatekeepers Phenomenon
I think it’s fairly well known, in the lefty blogosphere, that right wing foundations fund right wing think tanks, who provide interviewees for the corporate media. OTOH, I don’t see much questioning of left wing institutions’ sources of income, in the lefty blogosphere.
Not good….
Are you saying that this process began with Bush II’s “No Child Left Behind”? I’m sorry, perhaps I’m asking too much, but I’m curious as to what specifics the Reagan Administration pulled off, either in the form of legislation, or perhaps in affecting local school policies by changing enforcement of existing regulations, that would have caused changes in classroom behavior. Bush II may have accelerated the decline of education, but he certainly didn’t start the decline.
Also, I still am ignorant of baseline information, which I indicated via my questions to Ohio Barbarian:
The accuracy of those statements can certainly be questioned, but you have every right to make them.
Just as I have a right to point out nuances of your rhetoric that, in my opinion, reveal an unfounded premise about the logical capacities of liberals couched in a supposed neutral call for more critical thinking in education.
If you are merely calling for more logic and rhetoric study in college, why bring up left vs right at all? Beyond that, why use language that excuses the right and diminishes the left – being as how it’s all just a call for better schooling? And why devote such a large part of your post to issues of left & right?
Put more bluntly, I have the right to look at how you said what you said and bust you on it’s implications.
Lol. It’s particularly easy to see irrational tribalism manifesting (unattenuated, so far as I can tell, by classical education), when lefties describe righties, and vice versa. For a particularly ridiculous example of this, see my diary Call for investigation of Left HATEKeepers (and Right HATEKeepers, too)
Also, it’s too late for “better schooling” for people already past the formal educational phase of their lives. People need some sort of alternative form of education. Progressive Radio Network is a good candidate to take this on. Or, so I hope.
Also, I heard a talk recently by an entrepreneur involved with socially useful games. He mentioned that Sandra Day O’Connor was behind games that taught some civics. Her motivation came from asking clueless youngsters the names of Supreme Court Justices, who nevertheless immediately responded – correctly – when asked the names of judges on American Idol.
I asked this guy whether any of these games taught “real” politics, and not just textbook politics about how things are supposed to be. I specifically mentioned “Indispensable Enemies” by Karp.
His answer was not encouraging, though not surprising, either.
I’ll further mention that besides the “trivium”, I believe that high schools should teach non-Euclidean geometry, a semester of probability and statistics, what a cost-benefit analysis looks like, the history of propaganda (US generated, as well as that of foreigners) and some elementary mathematical logic. They should also be taught both the utility and limitations of mathematical models, though that would probably have to be taught in a qualitative way, at the high school level.
This is not asking too much. My cousins in Greece had studied group theory in high school, which is not normally taught to American math students in college until Year 2.
Also, the entrepreneur I alluded to was Asi Burak, Co-President, Games for Change. He created a game which allowed people to assume the role of either an Israeli or Palestinian leader. And this game did indeed strike me as socially useful, as it forces people to think in terms of the hand dealt to “the other”. By “the other”, I mean not only the national adversary, but also the politician in charge of one’s own country, who has to make very difficult decisions.
I will point out that you’ve (continually) avoided this question:
And leave things with this:
We do have common ground – I agree whole heartedly that our discourse would be much better – and people of all beliefs would be less polarized – if we learned more critical thinking skills – in school and out of it.
I really don’t know the answers to your questions. All I have on this subject is my own personal experience. I was NOT taught rhetoric or logic in my Texas high school, though I WAS taught it at the University of Texas when in-state tuition was a whopping $3 a semester hour.
I DO know that by my senior year in 1979-80 none of the professors who taught such things had a chance of getting tenure.
Prior to 1910 ‘high schools’ (six grades were more than enough for us plebes) were college preps for the wealthy, some may have taught logic and rhetoric, or tutored extras with your latin and greek, to prep those courses found in college curriculums of the 18th thru 19th century.
Logic is a subset of Philosophy. Its been trying to mine intrinsic truth out of our language of experience by using mathematical methodology this last century. We now have quantum logicians who are pondering the dark energy of thought, but can’t get funding to build a big enough syllogistic collider, so Nietzsche was right, logic is all in our head after all.
You get rhetoric in pre-law university curriculums and law schools.
Short answer, Widely taught? Nope and Nope. Yet available for the connoisseur of esoterica. ;^)
Hmmm, Watt4Bob; that’s an intriguing theory to consider. Thanks, I think I will. ;o)
Metamars, it’s a bit silly to post on a dead thread, but off and on all day I’ve been considering your post and…logic. I’m once again pressed for time, so this will be by way of shorthand.
Critical thinking may indeed be logic-based. Inductive reasoning has its attractions for many of us, and (I think) need not be totally shunted away in the thinking process finding good conclusions.
I’d also have to add that intuitive thinking is given rare mention in the process, and often contributes to a helpful heterodox contemplation of new ideas, new models.
Further, and I wish I had more time, studies indicate (yeah, I know) that among the best and brightest, introducing new facts cause 10% of them to adhere even more ardently to stuff they are *provably* wrong about. (a tenet of Personal Perception theory, i think.)
Among all Americans, a fun fact is that people who believe what they do, als believe that what they believe…is true. Hilariously obvious, but again: many, when new facts are brought to bear, often adhere more tightly to their *incorrect* beliefs, part of the tangent of cognitive dissonance theories.
Brain differences, fMRIs…wish I had more time for some of that; gotta scoot.
Please keep in mind, I’m remembering something read long ago, and not something I’m at all pushing.
BTW, I think all of us exhibit a mixture of right-brain, and left-brain ways of grasping the world around us, and part of true ‘critical thinking’ must surely be understanding when to quiet the chattering mind in order listen to the small voice of one’s own intuition.
And I wouldn’t doubt that at least on occasion, the small voice says “Think about it”.
I’ve read a bit about such research. I don’t remember the details regarding how long an incubation period for the contradictory meme was involved, but I believe it wasn’t all that long.
I’m not looking at quick fixes (though rapid fixes to societal problems are, indeed, desirable). Instead, I’m looking at problems that were generations in the making, and will take many years – at best – to rectify.
I suppose I should have added the teaching about research such as this to the list of desirable remedies to irrationality. I take it as an axiom (with supporting evidence, plus personal experience of others and even my own cogitation) that nobody is completely rational. Being in denial of one’s own inabilities to do proper analysis is not a good sign….
BTW, I also get annoyed by hyper-rational types, who deny psychic phenomena, and get very pig-headed about things that scientists don’t understand, well.* I’m not suggesting that people deny all forms of intuition. In fact, regarding spiritual matters of how to live one’s life, I think intuition is more important than rational analysis.
However, it’s important to note that there are different types of feelings, and even different modalities of intuition. But I am getting off the main track, and don’t want to discuss such things in a political blog.
The dumbing down of the public is is largely an intellectual affair, with an intellectual solution. Nobody is suggesting that the deeper problems of life will become solvable by studying logic.
* like atheist and skeptic Richard Dawkins, who basically outed himself as a fraud (though he surely won’t agree with this characterization)
Tribalistic Irrationality? It is necessary that consumers NOT be strong in rhetorical analysis under capitalist-constructed social hallucinations. This especially applies for political consumption since it is necessary to prevent disruption of partisan masquerade.
Conservatives are an authoritarian lot. It’s characteristically cynical that they would commend an education in rhetoric for a society dominated by propaganda.
The idea that an entire population be comprehensively trained in the trivium in order to protect it from the best sophism money can buy is ludicrous. No such an absurdity was contemplated in Medieval times.
Better Dante’s sentence to the eight circle of Hell, where “Corrupt politicians (barrators) are immersed in a lake of boiling pitch, which represents the sticky fingers and dark secrets of their corrupt deals.”
Rather, it is the perverse application of the Humanities under crapitalist society, where the best educated set out to corrupt their fellow man, that must be disciplined.
I should have known better than to waste my time looking at that.
Pish posh. I’m sure Isaac Newton wasn’t thinking of how to get astronauts to the Moon, and back, when he wrote Principia. So what? Glimpsing the intentions of a creator of our intellectual heritage, or the intentions of early adopters of such products of the mind, doesn’t determine whether or not such knowledge is relevant, today.
Do you really believe that modern Americans don’t regularly fall for appeals to authority fallacies? Or red herring fallacies?
I would grant you this, though – the center of Greek culture was Athens, and for all their Golden Age philosophers, Athens could not restrain it’s imperialistic ambitions, and ended up foolishly squandering its empire, amongst other examples of collective stupidity.
I doubt that most Athenians bothered with philosophy, though I don’t really know. I just did a quick Google search for education in Ancient Athens, and the first reference I clicked on doesn’t mention philosophy.
Pffft. I think you went for the low-hanging fruit, comrade, cause you sure didn’t manage to get it.
Try again?
Dawkins’ behavior was similar to that of the Catholic prelates (in what may have been an apocryphal tale), who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.
In the movie Dumb and Dumber, unwelcome information is dealt with by sticking fingers in ears, and saying, “La la la la la!”
Dawkins was present with Sheldrake , with a camera crew. His ah-h-h-h-h, incuriosity may not phase you, but I find his hypocrisy unforgiveable. He was no more interested in the truth than Galileo’s Catholic visitors.
Like I said, Dawkins is a fraud.
Pathetic.
Are you kidding? I can see Dawkins try to interview metamars – metamars runs out the clock. Amusing you’re sympathetic with Sheldrake.
And the “fraud” in your ref is really from the producer’s assistant. Dawkins is straight with Sheldrake. Now, should Dawkins have a venue to take him on, I’ve little doubt Sheldrake would be running with his tail between his legs.
Say, how come you like all this contrarian bullshit, comrade?
I suppose your imaginary scenarios suffice for you.
In your imaginary Dawkins-Sheldrake II scenario (at a Dawkins-selected venue), does the audience clap wildly, as Dawkins shows what a fraud Sheldrake is, or do they merely clap enthusiastically?
Low-hanging fruit again, comrade metamars.
I’d like to hear your real beef with Dawkins. Does it have something to do with his Atheism or is it his Selfish Genes? You should have collected more damning evidence by now.
Ack. Ack ack.