"Worry Me to Sobs: Care for a Bit of Education?"

When 'keeping things plain' means limiting things and readers unreasonably
by beatrixpg

(Pls turn next to Look Before Lunging: Read, Study, Think for Yourself)


It's no use tarrying in zones of view at once comforting and threatening. Students of the past--the eager ones, at least--throve in times of intellectual "ordeal." Now, I sense a change so drastic as to worry and weary me in scholarship. A student (male, in his 30s) made a strange point the other day. However impertinent, it's a point nonetheless that a teacher of epistemology or any subfield of rational analysis must think through fast and carefully. His idea shrieks of utter philistinism, but inasmuch as it voices those of so many students, I now bother to answer in a more engaging manner. The aim of teaching after all is in part to coax students into the fold of avid learners, a frame of valid inquiry, or a direct involvement in notable, usable discovery. The teacher later to triumph in his work has first to learn what's right to share with students--"right" since proper not just to some or one in particular, but to the reality at large as lived--it's what I've picked up from my great friend Caroline Hau, under whose mentorship I cheer.

Now, the reality that something like his point could even be raised was enough to make me want to attack it, fangs out and knees bent for the lunge; I didn't however. I fashioned arguments, hopefully, to bear on the way he next views complexities in "reading and writing." He began his talk with the assertion that writers of any sort, on whatever scale of intellect, must seek humbly an audience with the readers of their choice, dependent that they are on people taking the time to even consider their writings, and by "considering them," he meant sparing them a look. For such reason, he added, they must, the writers, do as able, in order to speak in words easily and readily absorbed.

He stressed that a writer's work, even at the time of publication, matters at most to himself, hence all (not certain of) our writers must ensure that their words in each particular can be understood and right away interest the audience they sought out. The reader, in his sense of it, is like a consumer the writer must try his hardest to please and appease with gentle, easy conversation, except that in his description of a "light conversation," he seemed to mean facile, laid back, narrow-ranging chatter. The writer, he said, only pleads for attention to words that concern, if not wholly, then chiefly, himself. So, he must with his opening simple phrases be able to convince of his worthiness of attention.

We've chronicled all manner of trends in our studies, and nothing more shocks me than the changes that incline us to anti-intellectualism. From beneath the argument of the student leers the now popular philisitinism perilous for rigorous thought. Many argue that books have no worth; to this day, many say that. They say learning by experience is pure and real. The assumption there is that writers have no experience, and that to read about life is to sully one's outlook. But is the view of experience, with which we begin to perceive and make sense of it, a pure one? How so? What doctrines are imposed only in readings and totally absent from practical reality? Even the understanding of "experience" has been attempted to help life, to make the actions of people and their responses better and easier, in tomes of writing whose noble goal has endlessly been to educate. The most vociferous in their statements about "experience" and "knowledge," those quick to writhe at all things "intellectual" (whereas we used to cringe and wince at all things imbecilic), are those who know the least about them as concepts and dare to tutor us in their wonderful stupidity. No wonder the arguments fracture, fissure beneath the weight of a fuller review. They humor me, truly; but laughing at them is no pleasure for me, as it hurts me badly at the sides. Understanding the written idea is practice-processing the principle behind things. When reading, one's made to utilize the intellect a great deal more than when not reading. And dismal exposure to books creates comprehension problems that in turn betoken much larger difficulties for the future.

A writer (i.e. a philosopher, fictionist, poet, analyst, scientist) puts himself always to the task of educating, while speaking to, people--and this is the case, no matter the absence of motive to cajole or urge or tug over to one's side the reader. Words when digested tend, on some level, to teach and counsel by imparting, period. They're able to gesture for deeds from within the inmost pockets in the especially attentive human mind. His ideas' room in a discursive meeting place (regardless of whether they indeed merit writing and reading in terms of quality) may coach as much the knowing of things as the receiver's will to make new or continuing realities of what's learned about through ideas, or words per se. So, he must stay as wise an "educator" as achievable, I would insist, though he need not try pleasing us at all costs.

Some of us bestow reading and writing more value than typically liked. It's not the writer's job to pacify even the readership in mind--readers as the absorbing end of scribbled speech, as the presumable learners or students of and through words. The reader may opt not to take on writings deemed too difficult, may shove them well enough aside and hide or junk them, and may ignore the ambition they mean to further. What education, through their reading, he misses out on, is then wasted on account merely of either intellectual mistrust or laziness. What decisions he makes in life that fail, because of impatience with learning, reading, and knowledge, thus count among his personal liabilities. (I set aside here the question of comprehension ability, something we also gauge learning potential against).

The student's argument about writing is that of a person incapable of viable insight and industrious study, and demanding the pampering the world can manage for him. He fails to see the importance of learning by reason also of bare education, of thrifty attentiveness to study and books, and of sparse capacity for absorption. He says in effect, "give it to me eas(il)y or I won't take it at all," as if the favor of education is mostly done the educator. But not all writers write begging for notice to elevate something or single themselves out for public regard; not all write seeking notice, period. True, without it actually registered, the point in a message is virtually as good as nonexistent. It may be lost on some or many, but it's not necessarily proven, on such basis, absent or worthless.

The best that we can do to help mutual gain and improvement, and in this case through reading, is to make available and ready the tools needed for the task. Once available, the decision to pursue education as required or desired is one the "student" has to make for himself. The point is that once the tools are made accessible and deprivation of knowledge is completely prevented, the offer of learning becomes that which the student can choose as much to accept or negotiate, as to challenge, resist or turn down. Just as he may embrace the potential for education by reading, so may he denounce its very concept. But I wonder, on what defense?

The duty of the wiser, in this regard, is only to assist in making possible our education in many and changing improving ways; once enabled, learning becomes then an option we as students, or in this case, as learner-readers, may or may not sieze for our benefit. But I won't ever agree that learning through reading and writing intelligently are loopholes to avoid, for certainly they're not. If we always serve up to people the easiest ways out--easiest way to write or read (idiot guides that guide--consign--us to idiocy)--we give them over to mediocrity of mind. In the academe, philistinism has become some benchmark for performance to level up to; people posthaste have ceased pursuing the truly "intellectual" answers to questions even at university level, and we now hear students demanding readings that are suited in quality of thought and expression to their range of mental patience for words.

I've been thrown prissy questions related to the subject of "writing and reading" many times now. The truth is that I never really mind having to field them. But I do ponder occasionally the load of effort made to tire each other with talk whose pleasure is in stoking hatred of thinking and jeering at writings "too smart to comprehend."

There's not a thing that guarantees education like the yearning, the inner furor, for it; aptitude, perseverance and desire for it are the most taxing to combat, most worthless to scourge, and best of all, the most difficult to beat.

Now, I, in a sense, chivvy people into reading more and doing it for the sense to catch in ideas. For no tragedy's more wounding than what smug ignorance bodes for itself. If the conditions of our lives treat us so generously to the possibility of learning (with a wealth of both reading and writing material, for instance), then why not help ourselves to it? We must furnish people with the breaks and aid they deserve, but we must also nurture independent study. If you have all the breaks to achieve something, then learn to work toward and achieve it on your own, and that's what some of us are taught, and that's what teaches others the appropriate basics. You ply them at best with tips on reading and studying; if they must read books to learn from them, and wish to learn critically in general, then they must also learn to read them self-assisted. When you're ladled food, you spade in and chew and swallow it yourself. Either you get your muscles working, or they're denied their function completely. To that comes down our being able to stay relevantly alive. If you've had all the breaks, make the most of them and learn. We only study so we can mature able to sieve out for ourselves, and not be fed by others, the grains of ideas to nourish us. If you have the knowledge, you don't live merely quavering out responses to life's sordid pressures. You don't quiver before the challenge to your wisdom and ability. In places where the idiot guide is made to last, lazy idiocy is encouraged for most, while wiser thought is pushed only for a few. There's a hand there that thieves about ever so slyly, and fiddles unwatched with your options in life; you must swat it off before it steals your intelligence.

(Pls turn next to Look Before Lunging: Read, Study, Think for Yourself)