House of Eratosthenes

Help me with your last paragraph. What is the difference between “messing around with packaging” (not substance) and being shallow? I’m not saying that bi-lingual people are necessarily deep thinkers either. But knowing another language does give opportunities. The economic and social opportunities are obvious. But it does bring opportunities for deep thinking, too. If people don’t use them, well, as you say, it is easier to fake intelligence than to have it.

Said last paragraph being:

My point is not that multi-language students are shallow. I’m simply pointing out that these are different brands of intelligence. One type of intelligence concerns itself with substance, and one type messes around with packaging.

And my response was — deep breath now:

It gets into the Yin and Yang theory. These disappointments I had with the Esperanto kids, in which I was told (or it was implied to me) they were super-bright kids burning the candles at all ends…and then, when I queried them about pressing school problems, in solitude, I discovered they lacked comprehension. I offered the example of trig, because it is rich in conceptual challenge. Process & procedure will not get you all the way there with trig. The teacher can say “step one, measure the distance of the hypotenuse; step two, find the angle; step three, refer to your chart, the one that says “cosine”; find the angle; set up your division equation.” Once you are walked through those steps, in fact, once you show absolute mastery at those steps — how prepared are you to conquer trigonometric math? Not at all, right? Hence my shock at finding these kids didn’t understand the concepts.

What they had been trained to do, was: Once an idea was formed by others, find a way to express it to maximum effect. Sen. Obama, in essence, is a product of this kind of education — the kind that presume[s] an expressive child must, out of necessity, be an intelligent child, and vice-versa. What keeps those systems functioning is a sort of penguin logic. Remember the penguin cartoon that shows […I make reference to the cartoon to the right]…The logical construct might be shown as “bright kids are in Esperanto, therefore kids in Esperanto are bright” — the un[i]versality of giftedness in the ability to express, ends up being just the garnish that makes this appealing. But the teachers get what they want out of it, which is another radial joint in the vicious cycle of politics. The kids are thought to be intelligent, and so the teacher identifies with the kids and starts to mentor them; the kids do well (are able to answer the test questions); the teacher is lauded for teaching the kids. And it all has the appearance of an effective teaching job being done.

But there’s more than one way to trip up most of these kids. You needn’t rely on trig. In fact, the Mensa test is constructed for the purpose of passing only the kids who can both formulate and express ideas. So you get questions like “if all freeps are glorgs and all glorgs are nimps, what is the relationship between freeps and nimps?” The question is isolated from the field of expressive talent, because “freep” “glorg” and “nimp” are all nonsensical words — so any test subject whose conceptual acumen is interwoven with his ability to express, will be derailed. He’ll need to understand what those things are, before he can proceed (or else re-wire his thinking on the spot).

But, if I dare say so myself, I think my cup analogy is the Pièce de résistance.

I would compare it to washing a cup. Every idea, like a cup, has an inside and an outside. These are different surfaces; our folly in communication is that the merit, or lack thereof, of each idea is determined by the inside. How it is communicated, and this includes how it is taught & learned in the class, is determined by what is on the outside. Like sonofsheldon said, “Teachers aren’t trained to teach in the ways that some students learn.” Teachers are like dishwashers who wash dishes by hand, and in inspecting their own work, tend to only look at the outside. And so the whole foreign-language thing, to my way of thinking, tends to offer the outside-washers the idea they have achieved some teaching work that they haven’t really achieved. And that would be my explanation as to why so many of the second-language kids couldn’t do trig. If I polled them all, I’m sure I could’ve found some very bright ones who could. All I’m saying, really, is that it’s a little unsettling to see a plurality of kids thought of as “geniuses” who can’t do this basic work, because they can’t conceptually handle it, and I think that should be of concern to somebody before we start talking about the virtues of all kids being taught Spanish as a second language.

I don’t know if my question was really worth a post of it’s own. But I will say once again that I am flattered and honored to show up in a post here.

I haven’t taken the time to sort through your Yin and Yang theory but from what I gather it’s Thinking vs. Feeling, or R and D vs. Marketing, or The Thinkers and the Doers vs. Everybody on the “B Ark”. Am I close?

I like your cup washing analogy largely because it reminds me of one from my (and George Bush’s) favorite philosopher. But you connect “washing” with learning or development. He did Good and Evil. And I like the idea of different intelligences. And I like your comment that teachers don’t always teach the way their students learn. Maybe, just maybe, those Esperanto kids could have done trig if it had been taught them according to their style of learning.

I guess what I’m saying is that an important reason for teaching another language is that it can give the student the opportunity to avoid becoming a pinhead.

“I want everyone to be exactly like me, and if they aren’t, I want them to go away.”
- BroKen | 08/15/2008 @ 12:15
Good point.

Here’s a question that deals with irony, though: How come the multi-culti types seem to constantly nurture a monopoly, or something very close to it, in the pinheadedness department?

Here’s an anecdote to back it up. A few years back, Time Magazine had named Sacramento as America’s Most Diverse city. The radio guys went on air looking over this article, in which you’ll notice there is a prominent subheading 70 Languages, One System. One of them said (paraphrasing here), “I’m sorry, but if you think one school system with seventy languages is a good thing, you are nuts.” Problem: Mayor Heather Fargo was listening to that broadcast live, and she didn’t like it. She and some folks from her office started a campaign of contacting the FCC to possibly have the radio station’s license pulled.

Now, I know of quite a few folks on the “English Only” bandwagon. I’m told they want to resort to something to reinforce such a policy; rounding up the babblers and putting ’em on trains, setting up camps like FDR’s. But I’ve not seen evidence that any of them want to do such a thing quite yet. I haven’t heard of a story that could match up with the one above.

My theory is — there is something about people who make too much of a science out of linguistic expression. Washing the outside of the cup, so to speak. People who don’t express things so well, within my experience, simply want to be left alone. People who find new ways to express things, seem to get the impression they’re better than everyone else and want to eradicate people who are different or who might think differently.

Like democrats. Or, more specifically, Mayor Heather Fargo.
- mkfreeberg | 08/15/2008 @ 13:25
“How come the multi-culti types seem to constantly nurture a monopoly, or something very close to it, in the pinheadedness department?”

Insanity, maybe?

Washing the outside of the cup is always easier (whatever “washing” means) and the short-term rewards are greater. Everyone has a tendency toward pinheadedness. Even, “simply want to be left alone” can look like “I want them to go away.”

I know, you live in California and the inmates have taken over the asylum. For you guys mulit-culturalism is an expression of anti-western culture and an expression of moral relativism. “We can’t impose our values or language on them lest we DESTROY their own.” Balderdash! For them, the the greatest value is equality. So, any value system that values valuable things because they are valuable is not equal– it has no value. Yep, insanity.

In skimming your Yin/Yang stuff, I was fascinated by your link to the guy’s discussion of “lightworkers” and “darkworkers.” How hard the guy worked to avoid ANY moral judgment on selfish, conniving, back-stabbing criminals. Why? Because they are effective. And after all, you eat meat, don’t you? That’s not just insane. Any value system that cannot name evil, becomes evil itself.

Call me a romantic (outside cup washer?), but I think that knowing another language is inherently valuable. It has beauty (really, that’s inside the cup!) even if it has no utility.

Now, teaching English to immigrants has both beauty and utility.
- BroKen | 08/15/2008 @ 15:37

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A Post of its Own…on English
Thursday, August 14th, 2008