Well, I had a similar perception of this, thinking at one time
briefly that the ignorance was confined to the liberal arts students, but, like you, talks with teachers of undergraduates
in the sciences has corrected that view. I do think though
that the schools can be blamed somewhat, since that knowledge
is so generally lacking in every field among many of the students, and so those who do have it often have it because
of their individual drive and initiative, and are therefore
somewhat autodidactic or educated "outside" or "beyond" their
educational experience. I know that some of the bright, in
high school for instance, live a sort of double life, on
one hand completing the various assignments and requirements
for class which can be somewhat exhaustive, and on the other
studying and reading to their own mental life and interests
outside of school and which oddly never finds a way into
the school. Well, and social standing is a factor, I remember
one child who was put into a remedial entry level class because
of her social background and ethnicity and didn't do so well
at that minimal level, probably being bored to death, though eventually in a later class, another teacher noticing something
in the child's work recommended testing and the child tested
into the gifted program. Though I agree that there are as many
of the bright among any social background, and that the assumption that the bright are merely the privileged is annoying, but that also seems to me to have to do with a certain anti-intellectualism. And, yes, many of the bright are "anti-social," though whether it is the divisiveness of intellect
or that being anti-social, misfitted in some way, drives the autodidactic impulse, I'm never been able to say.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
-------Original Message-------
From: Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 09/05/03 09:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Belinda on Frost's burning clove
>
> > If only the howlers I received were this terrific Max. Usually, its just
a
> lot of typos & some missed understanding, so to speak.
>
> Although students' sense of history is certainly interesting: everything
> happening before about 1970 seems to happen in the same ancient
period...
>
> In response to a question on Timothy Findley's rewriting of the Flood
> story, Not Wanted on the Voyage, one student commented that Noah was a
> tyrant just like the Roman emperors of the same period...
I always found this sort of thing hard to take, when I was teaching. For a
time I argued that nobody would be permitted to get away with a similar
level of ignorance on an undergraduate course in Physics; but then I spoke
to one of my friends, who taught Physics undergraduates, and discovered
that
this was not in fact the case. He complained of his students' mathematical
illiteracy, their ignorance of basic facts and principles, and worst of
all
their apparent unwillingness to recognise and repair these deficits in
themselves. We blamed the schools, but perhaps we should really have
blamed
the students: after all, some of the people we taught, coming from the
same
social and educational background, were quite shockingly bright.
I always hated, and resent to this day, the notion that the difference
between the bright ones and the rest must be something to do with the
enjoyment of social privilege, when in so many cases it was so clearly an
*anti*-social instinct in those bright young people, an animus *against*
the
values of their social peers, that had formed the core of their
intellectual
drive. Intellect is divisive: you have to become divided, both from others
and within yourself, in order to have room to cultivate it. This cuts
across
social class, across all boundaries of race and gender and what have
you...
Dominic
>
|