What Did You Get?

Neil Postman, author of End of Education, describes public education as it not serving a public, but it, “…creates a public” (Postman). Dr. Ravitch brings up an idea of how if “Little Eva” cannot sleep, she will study Algebra instead. No child will do algebra instead of watching TV, and thus, Postman says that Ravitch’s idea is, “…not a new technology but a new species of child” (Postman 39). Public education today has created “new species of children” because the higher value is placed on the grade point rather than what the actual information means.

            Children in school are taught that they have to receive a certain score or have to do a certain event in order for them to pass the class. So, their minds are solely concentrating on how they can get that specific score so they can pass. After the exams are finished, they do not record any of the information and instead are just reading for the exam. There is a “new species of children” because of the emphasis placed on getting the grade point average so no information is actually being remembered and the students don’t know what some of it means.

Today, there is more information available outside of school than inside because of the technological abilities students have. However, technology has altered, “…the psychic, let alone the sleeping, habits of our kids” (Postman 41).  Technology has allowed the students to learn more about the topic, but, they don’t know what to do with that information afterwards. According to Postman, “schools are not now and have never been chiefly about getting information to children” (Postman 42). Students have moved away from the idea of knowing what the information means and going towards how they can achieve that grade point, which will help them in the future as well.

After finding out their grades, many of students go around asking “what did you get?” But, rarely do some students ask why they got that or how. Many of them support their answers with “because the teacher said so” because they don’t know what the information actually means and they can’t support their claim. Students have become “a new species of children” and care only about achieving a high GPA, rather than trying to understand what it is that is being taught to us.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Postman, Neil. The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.

 

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

S. I. Hayakawa, author of Language in Thought and Action, gives language a new meaning overall. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who believed that, “all our thoughts and ideas have come into our conscience through what we have heard and seen” (Gaarder 108). This statement is similar to the point that Hayakawa was trying to make in his book. He taught that the symbol is not necessarily the word itself (Hayakawa). So then how do you explain a “word”?

Aristotle, like Hayakawa, explained a word by referring to the “idea” of it (Gaarder 107). For example, if Aristotle was trying to explain a horse, he referred to it as the idea of a horse. Hayakawa repeatedly explained that the word is not the thing, and the map is not the territory it stands for (Hayakawa 29). A map may have a similar structure to the structure of the territory but it doesn’t mean that the map is the territory. The concept of the symbol not being the word can be shown in the Belgian artist René Magritte’s painting, Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), even though his painting is of a pipe.

 

Aristotle, along with believing that all ideas come from what we have heard and seen, thought that we have an innate power of reason, which is the ability to reason that you were born with. Hayakawa said that human beings have let various noises stand for specific words (Hayakawa 26). For example, if we saw a certain object, we may say “that is a book”. However, it is not actually a book but rather a picture of a book. In Sophie’s world, Hilde is reading from a book called “Sophie’s World” but her “Sophie’s World” is simply an idea, whereas the book we read is an actual book…or is it.

Works Cited

Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. Print.

Hayakawa, S. I. Language in Thought and Action. 2d ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964. Print.

9/11 Essay

Bush and Chomsky use different methods of rhetoric and different tones to get their points across to the audience. Chomsky uses harsh language and is very straightforward with his points, while Bush has a more uplifting tone which helps the audience engage with the topic. Bush is writing his speech only a couple of days after the event had occurred and wants to present the topic in a calm manner without scaring the public. He uses anaphoras when he thanks the public, helping them understand that they also have a part of bringing the country back together after the attack and finding a way to stop terrorism, “eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows” (Bush 5).  Chomsky, on the other hand, is writing about the event ten years after it happened, so he is harsher with his ideas and believed that Osama should have gotten a trial.

According to Chomsky, the actions by the United States constitute “American exceptionalism”, which is the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations. The US, after capturing bin Laden, killed him, and threw him into the water. Chomsky believes that he deserved a trial and an autopsy, whether he was a terrorist or not. If Osama was given a trial, Chomsky explains that we would have known for sure who committed the attack and who was innocent. It was an act based on American exceptionalism because America is accepting the acts from the laws.  Chomsky gives the example of what would have happened if the Iraqis were the ones who had assassinated Bush and dumped his body in the Atlantic. They would have done it after proper burial rights, which did not happen for bin Laden. In his case, the American’s violated the law by not giving him a fair trial. A few days before the assassination of bin Laden, Orlando Bosch, a terrorist, was granted a “presidential pardon by Bush over the objections of the Justice department” (Chomsky 6).  This trial did not also follow the laws of a fair trial.

In Bush’s speech, Bush tells the public that the US will pursue nations and will give every nation the option to choose the side of the terrorists or the side of the Americans. Every nation that supports terrorism will be considered their enemy (Bush 5). Unlike Chomsky, Bush doesn’t really go into details with what actually happened or if their actions were wrong. He wants to keep everyone supporting the government so continues to talk about what they will be doing to stop terrorism altogether. Bush also mentions how he isn’t going against any group as a whole but just terrorism. He calls it the “world’s fight” and says how everyone needs to work together to bring terrorism down.  The American exceptionalism entitled us to start a war and was practiced because Americans accepted the acts from the laws. They created laws that would sometimes not be enforced and was also accepted if it wasn't enforced. 

i rlly think lang is like dvlving

Technology has become a big part of our lives in today’s world and as a result, it has affected the way we speak and communicate. For example, teens and even some adults nowadays use shorthand methods and words such as “brb” or “gtg, ill ttyl”. From looking at this example and the warnings from authors, the conclusion can be made that language is devolving.

            George Orwell, in Politics and the English Language, explains how, “…the writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not” (Orwell 2). Often times, writers may have and even students may have concepts that they want to portray but cannot get their word across. They just speak the language and don’t think about what they are actually speaking or what meaning the words have. Orwell also explains how many metaphors have been twisted out of their original meaning, often for us to understand (Orwell 3). Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, described how when Lincoln and Douglas would debate for hours upon hours, the audience would not be lost but instead would respond to the debates with applause. On the other hand, not that many people would be as engaged into the debates as they were while Lincoln and Douglas were debating.

            According to Orwell, language has become very vague so others can understand. Language has devolved to fit our needs in the 21^st century, where almost everything is done in the form of technology. Shorthand versions are being used to quickly communicate and while communication is still going on, what is being said isn’t really being thought about. The telegraph had allowed more people to communicate. Neil Postman describes how people had started to write about irrelevant public events that were happening all around the world. Photography has also become a language, according to Postman. He describes photography as, “…a language that speaks only in particularities…unlike words and sentences, the photograph does not present to us an idea or concept about the world” (Postman 72). Photos created another way to communicate instead of communicating with words. Words weren’t required to describe pictures since the image had a set meaning to what it was trying to represent. Television has also led to the devolving of language. Advertisements try and use fewer words and more pictures so it is appealing to the public. As time went on, more shorthand versions of communication were developed so the public would often get stuck while talking to someone in person and would have to think about what they were saying.

 

Works Cited

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking, 1985. Print.

Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. N.p.: n.p., 1946. Web. 27 Aug. 2015.