View Single Post
  #36   Report Post  
Old 17-01-2008, 12:36 PM posted to aus.gardens
Trish Brown Trish Brown is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Nov 2007
Posts: 167
Default The Romans Tried Aquaducts

Ooo! What a great post! Thanks for the considered reply! :-)

0tterbot wrote:

1: we have many "education systems", not just one :-)


Yep! I'm in touch with other educators in every state and most share my
paranoia. (That is, 'most of those whom I know', not 'most of those who
exist'.)

2: it would certainly feature in some classes, but not others. the list of
available literature for schools is massive - from within that, teachers
decide.


Yep! My point is that classic Oz literature from Banjo Paterson, Henry
Kendall, CJ Dennis and so on ought to have a permanent place in schools
because they reflect a period of our development. I'm pretty fond of
John Marsden and other modern authors/poets too, but they don't come
from the pioneering era. Ever read Ethel Turner's books? They describe
pretty accurately what Oz kids did at the turn of the last century. We
oughtn't to pretend our history didn't happen!

3: i've heard it recited before & tbh, it does nothing for me. (one person's
classic is another's waste of time, it's just how it is :-) 99% of people
who know me cannot BELIEVE what my favourite book is. usually, i can't
believe theirs, either g


Fair enough! Not gonna argue there! What *is* your favourite book, just
out of interest? I love finding a good read through other people! :-)

snip

I have a theory that it will be far fewer years than we could imagine
before kids no longer need to learn to read or write or spell or punctuate
because machines will do it for them.


why would anyone make a machine to do that if _nobody_ knows (nor
presumably, cares)? that doesn't make sense.


Well, I've been in the computer industry on and off for - geez! - nearly
thirty years now! I've watched 'WYSIWYG', 'multi media', 'multi tasking'
and 'the information superhighway' arrive and take hold. I've seen
storage media change from 12" floppies that held 4k of info give way to
terabytes of storage. I've learned that technology does have massive
power to change what we do and how we do it. Kids today don't need to
spell, for example. The language they use to communicate on their phones
and MSN bears little resemblance to accepted English, yet they
understand each other perfectly. It's utilitarian, isn't it? Voice
recognition has taken a long time to come along in a useful form, but
it's nearly there. I can see a day when it'll no longer be necessary to
write what you want to say. Your computer will 'hear' your voice through
supermicrophones and transmit your info to someone else who will simply
listen to it and save it in audio format. Where's the need to write
anything? Just a suspicion I have...

The art forms we call
'the novel' and 'the poem' will disappear in favour of video movies and
thus all the imagery of the great poets and writers will become antique
and therefore no longer have currency. How awful!


it would be awful, but frankly i think you're being a little alarmist. the
death of novels & poems has been predicted but it is doubtful it will happen
(for one thing, if would-be video artists don't know the written word, how
would they be able to read the instructions? ;-) again tbh, i can foresee
worse than the disappearance of poems (which i generally consider to be one
of the worst forms of self-indulgence ;-) but even so, poets just keep
pumping them out! certainly the nature of performance and storytelling
changes (bards are a rare thing these days) but generally what we've always
had & presumably will continue to have are just different ways of people
telling their stories to others. the novel is nowhere near dead - there have
never been as many works of fiction (or for that matter, non-fiction)
available to so many people at once. mass literacy has brought that about &
people do value their literacy. i'd say the novel replaced bards & gossips &
"wise men" of old, video is akin to watching a play or a dance (although we
still have plays & dance performances - & again, more than ever).


Yep! I hear what you're saying and respectfully keep my own counsel. :-)
D'you happen to like classical ballet? I think poetry is very like
ballet: it's stylised and has boundaries and rules, that's all. Not
everyone can write a poem; not everyone can perform a great ballet, but
they do have standards of excellence and neither is everyone's cup of tea...

Among my favourite poets: Paul Simon (seventies writer of songs: Simon
and Garfunkel) stands far out there! Also, Till Lindemann of Rammstein,
an East German group.

lastly, not all of the "great" poets & writers really stand up these days
anyway. sometimes, things just lose currency. there's always a hardcore of
nerds who care about Brilliant Writer X, but not everything ages well.
shrug. imo, the truly remarkable thing about shakespeare (for example) is
that it never loses currency (or hasn't so far, anyway). most of his
contemporaries clearly didn't have what he had - they've lost currency. it
happens. not to make excuses, but i've tried & tried to read some stuff (the
iliad, for e.g.) & just find the style so inadequate compared to people who
came later.


Hmmm... I think I can see your point. I have to say, though, that
'great' writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoyevsky etc etc are
often an acquired taste and come with age. I only managed to read 'The
Lord of the Rings' (generally regarded as one of the great modern
classics from the Days of My Youth) by putting it in the dunny and
reading it in short bursts. I can't *stand* Tolkein's inflated,
self-conscious writing style.

the bible is another good example - some bits are just tops, &
others so very, very ordinary (all right, let's be frank - badly written,
outlandish and silly) that they just don't pass muster & simply wouldn't be
published in modern, more discerning times.


LOL! I've often wondered what was the drug of choice among those ancient
prophets. I think the Bible stands alone, though, since it's pretty much
unique in its origins, history and purpose. It takes a certain kind of
mind to want to wade through much of its allegory and ancient forms.

gasp! i've forgotten my capitals for this one!!

thinking about gum trees, many of them have 5-10 "common" names. the place
of latin names (for the common folk) is to make clear exactly which one
you're referring to. also, lots of plants are _only_ known by their latin
names. i think people who are sensitive about others using latin names have
a generalised anxiety you can't address or change for them :-)
kylie



Yeah, but did you know the taxonomy of gum trees has recently been
changed? Just to upset all our applecarts, I s'pose. In fact, a friend
who is a botanist in Texas broke the news to me. I was talking to her
about Angophoras and she gently corrected me, saying 'You mean
'Corymbia', don't you?' Apparently, the whole family Myrtaceae has been
revamped and 'fixed' so that many former Eucalyptus species now come
under 'Corymbia'. I think there's more info on the SGAP website.

Ack! Why do they do these things to us?

Again, thanks for a really enjoyable post and interesting point of view! :-D

--
Trish {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia