> John Whicker's point about students taking up a wrong implication was one that
Augustine noted in his 'Concerning the Teacher' ('De Magistro').  He imagined a
teacher trying to show a pupil what 'walk' meant by suddenly increasing his pace
as they walked together.  The result was that the pupil thought 'walk' meant
'hurry up'.  This warning makes it plain that learning is an evolutionary
process, in that it works (hopefully) by continually honing the understanding
closer and closer to success.  It is the same process Piaget described as an
alternation of  'assimilation' and 'accommodation', the former being the
interpretation of something in accordance with an already established concept
and the latter an adjustment of it in the light of subsequent experience.  We
all bring preconceived notions to bear on what comes to our senses, but clues to
other perspectives of interpretation lead us to try to refine those notions.
It is up to the teacher to provide those helpful clues -- though sometimes a
student can do the same for the teacher!

The senses themselves are purely automatic, free of any labels, just blank
evidence we may or may not interpret.  Thus Wordsworth

'The eye -- it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will'

We have to learn, initially through pain and pleasure implanting their
guidance in the memory and there leaving those memories marked with fear or
desire respectively, or, as lucky human beings, being able to be updated
through language by other human beings who have learned before us.  The most
important thing about the mind is that it minds.

The sensory experiences themselves remain an ever-open field for selection
so that those who can see relevances that others cannot can help their
fellows.  The eyes of both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson may take in a
stretch of ground, but Holmes sees a footprint where Watson picks out
nothing particular, and furthermore can say that a woman weighing 8 stone,
walking with a limp, wearing shoes purchased at Harrod's this spring, has
passed that way.  Jokes and stories are all to do with ambiguous situations
where rival interpretations produce shocking clashes of interpretation.
Othello thought the handkerchief was a convincing clue until Emilia proved
it otherwise.


A word about the linguist discussion.  I think that Herb and I do agree.
What I was complaining about was the attempt to move from 'language is
always changing' as a scientific generalization (something with which no one
can disagree) to 'It is therefore futile for the teacher to teach Standard
English as we are only concerned with description of a changing language,
not prescription of a rigidified one'.  But teaching Standard English
(especially to those who spend ten times as much time in front of the TV
screen as with a book in their hands) has to employ prescription.  In
learning French sooner or later one has to confront the 'faux amis', words
that give false clues because of similarity to unrelated English ones;
these cause confusion and have to be learned.  Similarly, I see nothing
wrong in at some point taking time in the English lesson over 'confusables'
like 'continuous' and 'continual', etc.  Fifty years ago in England it used
to be an expected part of the standard examination of students at 16 that
they showed their confidence with confusables -- no more!  Thus one could
use the word 'decay' if the result of the inverted class prejudice against
'prescription' were to be an increasing failure in the population using
Standard English to make these distinctions, as, unfortunately, begins to
look the case.  On the influential 'Today' radio programme in England one
often hears 'refute' used for 'deny', rarely the humble word itself.

Edmond Wright


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33
Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256

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