Kalashnikov47
Member
To view the original article of Mrs Devine, visit: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine/english-teachers-have-lost-the-plot/2008/09/19/1221331201826.html
Last month Mrs Miranda Devine solemnly declared her ground-breaking socio-lingual-Darwinist-anthropological discovery on her highly credited and elitist column of the Sydney Morning Herald Opinion page – “to elevate pictures and sounds to equal status (as written text) is to rewind human revolution and primitivise the brain.”
Last month when I first read this article, just a few days before the HSC English exam commenced, I absolutely adored Mrs Devine’s wittiness and her bitterness on the English syllabus that made me so frustrated. Yet, now I only have one more subject to go in two weeks time, I want to kindly point out a couple of trivial mistakes that Mrs Devine made (which of course, cannot overshadow the greatness of Mrs Devine’s pseudo-scientific achievement)
According to the theory of Mrs Devine, large quantity of sound and pictures, carried by media like films and the internet, which are infiltrating the brains of modern students through the ETA Trojan horse, will eventually subvert written texts. And worst of all, brings total destruction to human civilisation.
But what have written texts contributed to the “evolution” of humanity that deserves such unequivocal advocacy from Mrs Devine? The invention of texts, in both the orient and the west, occurred around 5-6 thousand years ago. At that time, the written text, as a new form of medium, must have caused the same disturb on society as films and “hypertext” have done to Mrs Devine.
Written text came to maturity at about 2000-3000 years ago when papyrus and bamboo became the “paper” of the day. Undeniably, the invention of written texts was a “great leap forward” in human history; it had driven the development of all the greatest ancient civilisations and brought immeasurable impetus to humanity that still echoes in the modern world. However, we must also realise that written text itself is only a short verse in the epic of human history (which can be traced back to a couple of million years).
Written texts can convey the most abstract concepts, allow humans to record down large amount of things their brain can’t, and make the communication between human beings much easier. However text, like any other forms of media, has its own limit. Perhaps Plato, who lived in the midpoint between us and the origin of written text, best sums up and evaluates the nature of it. In Phaedrus, Plato notes that text would lead to the regression of human’s all-round senses (i.e. visual and aural senses). Also, Plato asserts that education through text only teaches students with the teachers’ form of reality, not reality itself. Since students are compelled to read large quantity of text (like Mrs Devine has advised in her article), will force students to swallow knowledge rather than digesting knowledge.
Human’s understanding of the world, even the metaphysical world, comes not only from written text, but also from body language, picture and sound. And like written text, modern hypertext and multi-media text were invented to suit the needs of societal progression. The raise of film and internet is also a historic phenomenon, which might as well compensate the limit and inefficiency of written text. To elevate picture and sound to the same status as written text, or even surpass it, represents the positive progress and sophistication of human brain, not otherwise.
Mrs Devine has also mentioned that the syllabus needs to include more books especially books authored by Australians in order to bring back the “cultural predominance” that Australian literature had once enjoyed in our society. I certainly have nothing against this appeal. But once again, the curriculum must find a balance between “wide-reading” and what students can truly learn, as well as the balance between giving students a wider world view and the understanding of the Australian culture. Simply adding more contents to the syllabus will only act counter-productively.
As someone who has the first-hand experience on the absurdum of the current English syllabus, I had in fact enjoyed studying English once – until two weeks before my trial. English education, by then, merely meant memorising prepared essays. It is a consensus fact that if you want to get a high mark in HSC English (particularly in Advanced), you need to do your secret little prepared essays unless you are a brilliant writer (in this case, me and 90% other students are not super-talented writers). So already, we can see the scale of problem – the excessive and pedantic analysis on text (especially Module B of Advanced English) in the postmodern way had in fact subverted the true meaning of postmodernism (that is supposed to be the most liberal and progressive way of thinking) into mere indoctrination.
However, it does not mean we can solve the problem by just take out “postmodernism” from the syllabus. We live in the era of postmodernism and Mrs Devine’s internet version of her article (that partly denounces postmodernism) act as a testimony for the postmodern world. Inevitably, every aspect of our lives, including the English course we undertake, is inherently manifestations of this ideology. In fact the root of the problem lies on the “reactionary” value that still plagues much of the syllabus (i.e. the assessments base on how well students can understand the text in the way approved by the syllabus). Whatever the argument against postmodernism is, to remove the content of postmodernism from the syllabus altogether will be the senseless attempt to restore the old values, hence unleash the tyranny of societal regression.
I am more than just optimistic on our future. But for many, we, as the title of Donelly’s book suggests, are Dumbing down. The root of the problem is not the raise of multi-media, film and other modern media forms, nor the neo-Marxist ETA, nor our gene. In fact it lies on no one but those who think it this way. We are not getting dumb; we are just getting smart in other ways, the ways that represents societal change.
PS: Students of NSW! Stands up for progression and against those reactionary fools! Postmodernism is good! I hope I am not the only one fighting this battle against Devine!
Last month Mrs Miranda Devine solemnly declared her ground-breaking socio-lingual-Darwinist-anthropological discovery on her highly credited and elitist column of the Sydney Morning Herald Opinion page – “to elevate pictures and sounds to equal status (as written text) is to rewind human revolution and primitivise the brain.”
Last month when I first read this article, just a few days before the HSC English exam commenced, I absolutely adored Mrs Devine’s wittiness and her bitterness on the English syllabus that made me so frustrated. Yet, now I only have one more subject to go in two weeks time, I want to kindly point out a couple of trivial mistakes that Mrs Devine made (which of course, cannot overshadow the greatness of Mrs Devine’s pseudo-scientific achievement)
According to the theory of Mrs Devine, large quantity of sound and pictures, carried by media like films and the internet, which are infiltrating the brains of modern students through the ETA Trojan horse, will eventually subvert written texts. And worst of all, brings total destruction to human civilisation.
But what have written texts contributed to the “evolution” of humanity that deserves such unequivocal advocacy from Mrs Devine? The invention of texts, in both the orient and the west, occurred around 5-6 thousand years ago. At that time, the written text, as a new form of medium, must have caused the same disturb on society as films and “hypertext” have done to Mrs Devine.
Written text came to maturity at about 2000-3000 years ago when papyrus and bamboo became the “paper” of the day. Undeniably, the invention of written texts was a “great leap forward” in human history; it had driven the development of all the greatest ancient civilisations and brought immeasurable impetus to humanity that still echoes in the modern world. However, we must also realise that written text itself is only a short verse in the epic of human history (which can be traced back to a couple of million years).
Written texts can convey the most abstract concepts, allow humans to record down large amount of things their brain can’t, and make the communication between human beings much easier. However text, like any other forms of media, has its own limit. Perhaps Plato, who lived in the midpoint between us and the origin of written text, best sums up and evaluates the nature of it. In Phaedrus, Plato notes that text would lead to the regression of human’s all-round senses (i.e. visual and aural senses). Also, Plato asserts that education through text only teaches students with the teachers’ form of reality, not reality itself. Since students are compelled to read large quantity of text (like Mrs Devine has advised in her article), will force students to swallow knowledge rather than digesting knowledge.
Human’s understanding of the world, even the metaphysical world, comes not only from written text, but also from body language, picture and sound. And like written text, modern hypertext and multi-media text were invented to suit the needs of societal progression. The raise of film and internet is also a historic phenomenon, which might as well compensate the limit and inefficiency of written text. To elevate picture and sound to the same status as written text, or even surpass it, represents the positive progress and sophistication of human brain, not otherwise.
Mrs Devine has also mentioned that the syllabus needs to include more books especially books authored by Australians in order to bring back the “cultural predominance” that Australian literature had once enjoyed in our society. I certainly have nothing against this appeal. But once again, the curriculum must find a balance between “wide-reading” and what students can truly learn, as well as the balance between giving students a wider world view and the understanding of the Australian culture. Simply adding more contents to the syllabus will only act counter-productively.
As someone who has the first-hand experience on the absurdum of the current English syllabus, I had in fact enjoyed studying English once – until two weeks before my trial. English education, by then, merely meant memorising prepared essays. It is a consensus fact that if you want to get a high mark in HSC English (particularly in Advanced), you need to do your secret little prepared essays unless you are a brilliant writer (in this case, me and 90% other students are not super-talented writers). So already, we can see the scale of problem – the excessive and pedantic analysis on text (especially Module B of Advanced English) in the postmodern way had in fact subverted the true meaning of postmodernism (that is supposed to be the most liberal and progressive way of thinking) into mere indoctrination.
However, it does not mean we can solve the problem by just take out “postmodernism” from the syllabus. We live in the era of postmodernism and Mrs Devine’s internet version of her article (that partly denounces postmodernism) act as a testimony for the postmodern world. Inevitably, every aspect of our lives, including the English course we undertake, is inherently manifestations of this ideology. In fact the root of the problem lies on the “reactionary” value that still plagues much of the syllabus (i.e. the assessments base on how well students can understand the text in the way approved by the syllabus). Whatever the argument against postmodernism is, to remove the content of postmodernism from the syllabus altogether will be the senseless attempt to restore the old values, hence unleash the tyranny of societal regression.
I am more than just optimistic on our future. But for many, we, as the title of Donelly’s book suggests, are Dumbing down. The root of the problem is not the raise of multi-media, film and other modern media forms, nor the neo-Marxist ETA, nor our gene. In fact it lies on no one but those who think it this way. We are not getting dumb; we are just getting smart in other ways, the ways that represents societal change.
PS: Students of NSW! Stands up for progression and against those reactionary fools! Postmodernism is good! I hope I am not the only one fighting this battle against Devine!
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