Sunday, April 27, 2008
Wright is right.
Listening to Rev. Wright's NAACP speech on CNN.
This guy is good.
His basic point: Different is not deficient.
When he talked about his white teacher in the newly integrated school who was shocked by the black kids standing on her desk, he struck a deep note in my memory.
I had the same experience when I started teaching electronics at DeVry. The class had about ten black students in the front row. I was bothered by their constant repetition of parts of my lecture. One of them came up after class and explained the process of Call and Response: the students were learning by repeating the last word of the sentence. After that, I began to swing with the rhythm (to the severely limited extent that a purely white nerd can swing) ... and found not only the black students were happier, but I was happier and gave better lectures. I became more attuned to intuition and subjectivity, less aligned with enumeration and formalism. (Admittedly, Call and Response sounds a bit odd when the Response is "Microfarads!" rather than "Praise Jesus!", but it's the same principle.)
The brand-R talking point heads will instinctively smash against this theme, and they will be suicidally wrong. By insisting that all brains are identical, they will be following Marx into counterfactual egalitarianism, continuing to build a Procrustean country that serves only a small segment of its population.
Charles Murray was wrong, not because he stated that blacks and whites have different types of intelligence. That's the statement that got him ostracized.
Nope, that part was perfectly accurate. Murray was wrong when he said that linear and numerical intelligence is the only kind that matters, the only kind that can contribute to our economy. I've discussed this before in the context of employment.
In fact the Murray connection between academic minds and national success is wrong in two ways. First, because reliance on a purely hi-tech economy excludes many people from success and a decent life; Second, because we're finding that a hi-tech economy is not even the best way for American whites to compete. Koreans and Japs have better numerical brains than Caucasians, so they will end up beating us in that department no matter how hard we try.
So.
The Big Question is:
Why do we have a country?
Do we have a country to serve an abstract principle? To advance numerical thinking? In that case Murray would be right; we should then exterminate the wrong kind of thinkers.
Or do we have a country to serve and advance its people? In that case Murray is wrong; we should then find ways to use all types of thinking productively. We should find (or rather RE-discover) ways for intuitive and subjective minds to serve the country and to earn a decent living.
= = = = =
Clarification: Wright is undoubtedly wrong about many things, but everything he said in this one speech is on the mark.
A semi-relevant aside: For a cute and concrete illustration of learning by grabbing the word, and for some serious swinging, examine Marie Bryant.
¶ 10:57 PM
This guy is good.
His basic point: Different is not deficient.
When he talked about his white teacher in the newly integrated school who was shocked by the black kids standing on her desk, he struck a deep note in my memory.
I had the same experience when I started teaching electronics at DeVry. The class had about ten black students in the front row. I was bothered by their constant repetition of parts of my lecture. One of them came up after class and explained the process of Call and Response: the students were learning by repeating the last word of the sentence. After that, I began to swing with the rhythm (to the severely limited extent that a purely white nerd can swing) ... and found not only the black students were happier, but I was happier and gave better lectures. I became more attuned to intuition and subjectivity, less aligned with enumeration and formalism. (Admittedly, Call and Response sounds a bit odd when the Response is "Microfarads!" rather than "Praise Jesus!", but it's the same principle.)
The brand-R talking point heads will instinctively smash against this theme, and they will be suicidally wrong. By insisting that all brains are identical, they will be following Marx into counterfactual egalitarianism, continuing to build a Procrustean country that serves only a small segment of its population.
Charles Murray was wrong, not because he stated that blacks and whites have different types of intelligence. That's the statement that got him ostracized.
Nope, that part was perfectly accurate. Murray was wrong when he said that linear and numerical intelligence is the only kind that matters, the only kind that can contribute to our economy. I've discussed this before in the context of employment.
In fact the Murray connection between academic minds and national success is wrong in two ways. First, because reliance on a purely hi-tech economy excludes many people from success and a decent life; Second, because we're finding that a hi-tech economy is not even the best way for American whites to compete. Koreans and Japs have better numerical brains than Caucasians, so they will end up beating us in that department no matter how hard we try.
So.
The Big Question is:
Why do we have a country?
Do we have a country to serve an abstract principle? To advance numerical thinking? In that case Murray would be right; we should then exterminate the wrong kind of thinkers.
Or do we have a country to serve and advance its people? In that case Murray is wrong; we should then find ways to use all types of thinking productively. We should find (or rather RE-discover) ways for intuitive and subjective minds to serve the country and to earn a decent living.
= = = = =
Clarification: Wright is undoubtedly wrong about many things, but everything he said in this one speech is on the mark.
A semi-relevant aside: For a cute and concrete illustration of learning by grabbing the word, and for some serious swinging, examine Marie Bryant.
¶ 10:57 PM
