Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/06/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]All, I have some other thoughts about this discussion that are worth pursuing, perhaps. The steady decline in the ability of the average educated American to express his or her thoughts in writing (or in imagery) may be driven by a fundamental change in values. If we fast backward to the Civil War era, current events were reported in daily newspapers and in monthly magazines: No blogs, no cell 'phones, no movies, no radio, no television, no web sites. Other than face-to-face discourse, written communication was the way our populace communicated ideas and opinions; hence there was a high value placed upon doing it well. Those who controlled children's education at that time mandated coherent, skilled 3R abilities because they were highly valued, primary competences. In their simple wisdom, teachers of the era encouraged many little ones to learn to write well by required reading of the great classics of Western literature. Today most of our communication is conversational, casual and immediate. It hardly ever directly quotes or reflects the great thinking of antiquity. Tools of technology have afforded us the luxury of successive approximation in conversation; if we don't communicate a thought clearly the first time, we are granted tacit permission to express it over and over in different ways until the meaning is understood by the other. In most strata of society, our implied social contract is much more open and relaxed than in previous eras. Because classical 3R communication skills aren't NEEDED as much to survive and prosper, they're not VALUED as much. Because they're not VALUED as much, educational curriculums place less EMPHASIS upon them. Less EMPHASIS ultimately results in less PROFICIENCY and SKILL. For example: I discovered that one of my grandchildren is permitted to use a calculator to solve her arithmetic homework problems. She doesn't know how to count in the traditional arithmetic sense, but she does know how to compute! Since we often place a higher value upon IMMEDIACY than upon CLARITY, upon RESULT rather than METHOD, and society allows us to get away with it, our standards have devolved to the current state. The same is true in the pursuit of photography: The crutches of technology have freed many of us from having to set our Leicas beyond M4 manually, and having the knowledge and skill required to do so competently, but has this freedom from method made us better photographers? I wonder... When was the last time you wrote a long letter in long hand to a loved one? When was the last time you labored in a traditional darkroom, developing film and printing it with an enlarger? Len -- -----Original Message----- From: lug-bounces+ljkapner=cox.net@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-bounces+ljkapner=cox.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Marc James Small Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 4:05 PM To: Leica Users Group Subject: [Leica] Cultural Identifications and B.D. B.D. is speaking of average and frequent communication, not polished literary exercizes. No, the overall of written communication has not declined so much as that the inability of many folks to write legible missives has been highlighted thanks to e-mail. An inability to communicate clearly has been endemic in the US for the past century: most engineering schools had to institute mandatory "clear writing" courses around twenty years ago, and George C Marshall, the "architect of victory" in the Second World War -- and the ultimate apostle of simplified and clear communications in a military environment -- could not concoct a clean and simple message to save his own soul. None of us want to be judged by our private notes -- my Court files are full of personal abbreviations utile only to me and the like which are so much gibberish to anyone other, though I try to use standard legal abbreviations such as the Greek Delta for a defendant and the Greek Pi for a plaintiff in the event that I am stricken unto death by a lightening bolt in my next Court appearance. E-mail is supposed to be an informal communications medium. As such, an occasional mis-spelling is simply a minor glitch. But communications must be CLEAR and CLEAN and, thus, an e-mail missive laden with grammatical errors and typographical errors serves to block communication and to make this clean and clear. Finally, and I suspect that B.D. will object to this, our communications skills define our professional persona. Send in a resume laden with mis-spellings and syntactical errors, and observe how rapidly you do not get the job. I am an attorney and hold an MA in Classical Languages: you can bet your sweet bippy that I lace my legal writings with obscure Latin phrases and the like both to improve clarity (a phrrase in Latin can often be much more definitive than can one in English) and to intimidate the opposition, who probably did a year of Spanish in High School and no foreign language studies beyond this. It often works; the Judges often call me when clarification is needed on a Latin phrase submitted by another attorney which they do not understand. (It DOES help to have a Master's Degree from Yale in Classical Languages -- that makes me appear a w?nderkind though, if the truth be told, an MA in the hard academic disciplines at an Ivy League college is probably just so much of a booby prize appended to folks who failed to make the PhD grade, as was my case. It was a Booby Prize, though one earned properly.) What I am suggesting is that being regarded as professional requires the wearing of a long-sleeve cotton starched shirt, though the sleeves can be rolled up and the jacket set aside. Written and oral communications must be clear and the use of slang must not intrude into the meaning -- the use of the term "bling", for instance, is not recommended. The "Urban Gentry" is a wide-open environment. I am a member and so be it. Getting admitted is not difficult. Most of my cohorts are rather thoughtless and brain-dead but, what the hey, that is who they are. Fifteen years ago, I decided that I did not care to be included in this classification. The pressure to be so included is significant but it is interesting to note the returns: when I am invited to join a private club, I normally respond with Groucho Marx's "I would never be a member of a Club which would have folks like me as members" or whatever he said. So, I guess I am still a professional gentry sort though I am not certain what to do with this. BD to the contrary, I really do NOT sit around with my fellows planning the destruction of capitalism and freedom in the US and the world. Marc msmall@infionline.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir! _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information