Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

education

2020 Has Been a Big Year or I Finally Quit

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I finally quit school. I won’t say I left teaching.

Callings stick with us forever. Every dad is a teacher.

I taught for a long time, even became an administrator.

I taught Biblical studies, Latin, Greek, Geometry, Statistics, Algebra 2, Pre-Algebra, Logic, Public Speaking, Introduction to Computer Programming, and Strength and Conditioning. In college I taught introduction to systematic theology and the history of Christianity in the United States.

I had fun.

In my initial plan, I was going to take Lambda school courses at night and apply for a new job in the Spring and make next year my last. I mentioned this to a friend who’s the VP of a software company. He called me the next day and said I should just quit teaching now and to expect an offer. Anyway, I did. Because my attention and focus is less diffuse, I actually have more time to be a classicist and a lot of folks at the company are pretty entrepreneurial outside of work, but they also like what we do because it’s an unexpectedly important contribution. So over all, it’s been a great place to work. By a strange coincidence (providence? always) one of my colleagues worked on the same project as my dad in Singapore in the 80s, though they never met.

Anyway, one of these days I’ll post a list of things that need optimization in the classical Christian high school education domain. I’ve observed many dozens of these over the years and used to spend many hours every week puzzling over how to do it. I still do as the homeschooling of my children occupies my mind constantly.

I will say this one thing: my main preference in my current job over my previous on is this: I get to solve real problems as they come up. Here’s what I mean. I solve problems that really matter for peoples’ emotional well-being in jobs that use our software. This means that we even provide for their physical safety. The problems are real problems.

In education, you really want to solve real problems. Here’s the most-real problem of education: how to you pass down a tradition of habits that includes a body of skills and knowledge to a group of people with diverse family structures and backgrounds while still teaching individuals think logically and independently from the masses, particularly when mass media culture occupies so much of the time of the young? It’s a serious problem and it matters.

You often end up solving made-up problems instead: a new seminar invents a new method, a new paper-work, or a new “thing” and your whole workflow has to conform to it so you suss . In other words, the chief problem of education: “how can we create a curriculum that delivers the most important skills, knowledge, and experiences of the past in a way that meets the needs of individual students and their families” is often interrupted by, accreditation guidelines, dress-code minutiae, or a small-rudder on a big ship mindset where no agility is allowed.

2020 has been a big year for me. I got the strongest I’ve ever been, got the sickest I’ve ever been (lost 17 pounds in 14 days and all my gainz), switched careers, bought a house, probably had Covid-19 in January, and probably some other items I’ve left out.

Anyway, even though I work more hours now, I’ll probably have more time to contribute to my own blog. Or maybe not. But I hope to.

JUST SAY IT

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Beauty, according to the Thomists, is rightproportion, brilliance, and integrity. Evolutionary theorists have tried, and in some cases managed, to find biological grounding for our concepts of beauty. For instance, they at least seem to grasp the relationship between human beauty and reproductive viability, but even these relationships are associational rather than necessary.

But it is more ineffable than that. David Bentley Hart is more expansive:

“Beauty is something other than the visible or audible or conceptual agreement of parts, and the experience of beauty can never be wholly reduced to any set of material constituents. It is something mysterious, prodigal, often unanticipated, even capricious. We can find ourselves suddenly amazed by some strange and indefinable glory in a barren field, an urban ruin, the splendid disarray of a storm-wracked forest, and so on.

Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss 279-280

But in this evil age, the concept of beauty is being subject to the standard word games. The concept behind the word, however difficult to define, is essentially being deconstructed on two fronts. Some claim that beauty is an invention of the mind, especially the minds of men, and therefore needs to be rejected. Others seek to force the word beautiful to refer to that which is not beautiful, neither in the eye of the beholder nor by objective assessment. One remembers that there are four lights:

If you do not care to watch, a man is told that if he would simply say what he is told rather than speak the truth of which he is convinced, good things will happen. The truth under question is inconsequential. But this character bases his whole life on the principle that his first duty is to the truth. It concludes with him speaking the truth rather than giving in.

What modern art and other forces are attempting to do is get you to look at that which is ugly and call it beautiful. Seriously, watch this documentary some time:

At one point in the film, a sculptor tells Scruton that the artists and philosophers who want us to reject beauty are ultimately tempting us to reject knowledge itself.

If we call ugly beautiful, we become more comfortable calling false tue and evil good. Once we become so comfortable with self-deception, we find ourselves unable to discern the difference between any of those categories any more.

Isaiah 5:20 (NET): Those who call evil good and good evil are as good as dead, who turn darkness into light and light into darkness, who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter.

Why do Academics believe stupid ideas?

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I’ve wondered this for a while. Why do folks with doctoral degrees, who look down on others for their stupidity, nevertheless reject the value of IQ tests? Why do academics who believe in the power of ethnic solidarity and identity politics also believe that human beings are born as blank slates? Why do academics who oppose fascism, support larger government all the time? Why do academics who believe in the sexual revolution decry rape culture which is essentially the direct result of that revolution (devolution)?

Here’s a nice summary of Jacques Ellul’s explanation:

A related point, central in Ellul’s thesis is that modern propaganda cannot work without “education”; he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls “pre-propaganda” – the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes, posing as “facts” and as “education.” Ellul follows through by designating intellectuals as virtually the most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons:

(1) they absorb the largest amount of second hand, unverifiable information;

(2) they fell a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all indigestible pieces of information;

(3) they consider themselves capable of “judging for themselves.”

They literally need propaganda.

Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, 2

This is basically right. Nicolaus Taleb calls them “intellectual yet idiots.” Bruce Charlton calls them clever-sillies. It’s probably best to start calling them goobers and weirdos. Sometimes mockery is the best medicine for bad ideas.

What’s the difference between propaganda and education? I can think of one thing: propaganda provides ideas, habits, and attitudes while not providing its consumers with the tools to reject its influence. On the other hand, education provides a tradition of ideas, habits, attitudes along with the tools to reject them if they are inconsistent with apparent reality.

Appendix

On Why We Need Logic

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John Henry Newman was talking about his own era, but his thoughts are relevant today:

It were well if none remained boys all their lives; but what is more common than the sight of grown men, talking on political or moral or religious subjects, in that offhand, idle way, which we signify by the word unreal? “That they simply do not know what they are talking about” is the spontaneous silent remark of any man of sense who hears them. Hence such persons have no difficulty in contradicting themselves in successive sentences, without being conscious of it. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1873), xvii.

Learning basic logic is crucial for training in moral, academic, and practical formation. For example, being able to infer what somebody else would find offensive or pleasant takes logic. Similarly, determining contradictions between behavior and ideals takes logic. This is why some of the Pharisees hated Jesus. He applied logic to them in order to point out their hypocrisy. Logic and simply processes of elimination are very important in various service industries and home repairs that very few people my age can do that I remember all adults being able to do when I was younger (case in point: I totally missed a very simple fact when working on my car, the radiator reservoir had water…but the radiator didn’t, but I didn’t check the radiator, I jumped straight to replacing the thermostat, thankfully my uncle solved the problem).

Yet, despite its advantages, logic is not typically a part of the curriculum in most fields. It was not a part of my training in seminary nor was it a part of my undergraduate degree. Logic is not a requirement for my engineering degree either (though you have to learn it intuitively in computer programming, circuits, and mathematics). I learned logic in high school from a rogue English teacher who was not following the curricular guidelines and it has been a study of mine since then. I talked to a logic professor just last year after watching a debate he moderated. We discussed how amazing it is that essentially the same syllogistic rules work for inference in all fields and apparently in all physical space. He said, “That is troubling for me as an atheist. But have you read about Graham Priest’s paraconsistent logic?” This is precisely the trouble. Instead of teaching the thing that works and is supremely useful, we find logic replaced by theoretical substitutes apparently for the rhetorical purpose of making the universe seem less orderly.

I would guess that the inability of many people to follow a basic syllogism, find the hidden premise in an enthymeme, or discover contradictions, fallacies, and necessary truths leaves them in a state of confusion. Being able to determine what merely may be, or is likely to be true and what must be true is so crucial in our world of data overload.

I suppose the solution is to learn logic yourself (by a textbook or two) and start applying it to your life. Also, teach it to your children. Have classes at church. It’s more important than we realize, which is exactly the problem. We do not even realize we’re flying blind without logic precisely because we no longer use it.

Rhetoric and Dialectic: The Difference and Why It Matters

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Summary: Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, dialectic of verbal reasoning. Knowing the difference between the two will make you a better reader, listener, thinker, writer, and speaker.

Introduction

Sometimes a tool becomes so important to us, it’s impossible to imagine not having it. I tend to think of shoes, my pocket knife, and my car that way. For others, it might be their phone or laptop. But all of us know of a tool that becomes quintessential to who we are because of how it increases our capacity to be human. I’ve taught research, writing, and public speaking for 10 years now, and the distinction between rhetoric and dialectic has become such a tool for me. 

Rhetoric and dialectic are distinct forms and even methods of communication, and as such should be distinguished. Here is a summary definition of each:

  1. Dialectic is the art of utilizing logic and facts properly for the discovery, explanation, and demonstration of truth and probabilities. This is a dialogical (conversational) or monological skill. It essentially a question and answer process. (Aristotle Rhetoric 1.1.1-14) You should note that I am collapsing Aristotle’s concept of analytics into dialectic here (analytics deals with the form of argument and the various demonstrations that can be made once facts are discovered). 
  2. Rhetoric is the art of discovering what is persuasive, why it is persuasive, and for what it is persuading. It is also the use of persuasion. It deals with demonstration and probabilities, especially when persuading others to act. (Rhetoric 1.2.1)

For a further discussion of rhetoric and dialectic, see Aristotle’s Rhetoric at Stanford Philosophocal Encyclopedia. 

Clearly, the two are related. For instance, logic, which is part of dialectic, helps one to be more rhetorically capable in the case of debate. But knowing logic without knowing what actually persuades or interests others can make a speaker or writer boring and unhelpful. This is especially important if Aristotle was correct when he observed that:

Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible; our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, as we said in the Topics, when speaking of converse with the multitude.

(Rhetoric 1.1.12) 

In other words, some people, because they lack logical training or have a short attention span, cannot be convinced of truth claims or to take good actions by careful argument. Therefore, instead of careful argumentation, inference from commonly accepted principles must be used. These commonly accepted principles do not strictly have to be true. While I think that Aristotle is right when he says that rhetoric with some basis in truth is more persuasive, the problem is that many who know the truth are not good at putting it rhetorically.

In practice, the more vaguely positive something sounds, the more persuasive it can be to large crowds because people will fill such terms in with their own meanings. Rhetorical principles or premises typically just have to be emotionally engaging, easily memorized, and easily convertible with reference to their meanings. In American political rhetoric, some of the commonly used and emotionally engaging principles are things like:

  1. Terrorists are scary.
  2. Misogyny is bad.
  3. The wrong side of history is bad.
  4. Practice [A] is not who we are.
  5. The constitution is good.

On the other hand, the most persuasive argument about mathematics to a room of mathematicians would be an argument of pure logic, clearly defined principles, and detailed enumeration of the steps utilized to discover a conclusion.

A man skilled in rhetoric would know the difference between an audience of bored college students and a room of mathematical experts.

Dialectic and Rhetoric in Speech and Writing

Using dialectic is for doing research and constructing an argument based on the best evidence available. A sign you are reading dialectic might be an outline of the argument in the text so that people can follow the syllogisms carefully. Of course, a rhetorician knows how to use a syllogism is a way that seems like dialectic but is really just persuasion.

But, if a paper were to be presented to an audience that wasn’t a peer-review board, then one would determine which of types of evidence are likely to be the most convincing to that audience and present accordingly. Typically articles sent for peer-review are meant to advance knowledge and while they can use engaging language, typically should show evidence, state assumptions, explain biases, report counter-examples, show a careful argument outline, and provide clearly stated conclusions. Of course, results in the world of peer-review will vary. But nevertheless, the peer-review system provides the illusion of the genre of dialectic.

On the rhetorical level, if you wished to present your scientific findings about exercise to athletes, you wouldn’t necessarily present the evidence that made the conclusion seem most probable. Instead you would explain the results and give specific examples which would make the information seem the most useful for achieving results.

Questions to ask when writing a paper or speech:

  1. Are my premises true?
  2. Did I cite compelling evidence?
  3. Is my argument valid?
  4. Is the argument to complicated to briefly explain to a group?
  5. Am a stating the argument in a way that will be compelling to my audience?
  6. If I am leaving anything unstated or overstating a case for rhetorical verve, am I capable of qualifying and defending the truth in a more fact oriented context?

Dialectic and Rhetoric in Listening and Reading

When reading and listening, the distinction is still important. For instance, you’ll want to know what the author is trying to convince to do, believe, or support. Once you know that you can more easily discover which facts might be intentionally left out and whether or not those facts contradict the key points of the speech or paper and determine if the call to action is related to the facts presented.

Knowing whether somebody is using rhetoric to win a crowd or to create distance between the speaker and somebody else is also important. It can keep us from vilifying somebody who is simply “playing the game.” It can also help us to recognize when something is simply stated for rhetorical flourish rather than meant to be accepted as a fact.

In political rhetoric, the blur between persuasion and fact is taken advantage of, often to the detriment of voters. 

Questions to ask when listening or reading:

  1. What is the author trying to say?
  2. What is the author/speaker trying to get me to do (buy something, do something, believe something, examine the claims and logic, etc)?
  3. Is the author likely to be accurate?
  4. Are the arguments valid?
  5. Are the facts true?
  6. Are the premises left out of the argument actually true?

The Distinction From Aristotle Himself

In the Philosopher’s own words:

Now, as it is the function of Dialectic as a whole, or of one of its parts, to consider every kind of syllogism in a similar manner, it is clear that he who is most capable of examining the matter and forms of a syllogism will be in the highest degree a master of rhetorical argument, if to this he adds a knowledge of the subjects with which enthymemes deal and the differences between them and logical syllogisms. For, in fact, the true and that which resembles it come under the purview of the same faculty, and at the same time men have a sufficient natural capacity for the truth and indeed in most cases attain to it; wherefore one who divines well in regard to the truth will also be able to divine well in regard to probabilities.[1]

Nevertheless, Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible; our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, as we said in the Topics, when speaking of converse with the multitude. Further, the orator should be able to prove opposites, as in logical arguments; not that we should do both (for one ought not to persuade people to do what is wrong), but that the real state of the case may not escape us, and that we ourselves may be able to counteract false arguments, if another makes an unfair use of them. Rhetoric and Dialectic alone of all the arts prove opposites; for both are equally concerned with them. However, it is not the same with the subject matter, but, generally speaking, that which is true and better is naturally always easier to prove and more likely to persuade. Besides, it would be absurd if it were considered disgraceful not to be able to defend oneself with the help of the body, but not disgraceful as far as speech is concerned, whose use is more characteristic of man than that of the body. If it is argued that one who makes an unfair use of such faculty of speech may do a great deal of harm, this objection applies equally to all good things except virtue, and above all to those things which are most useful, such as strength, health, wealth, generalship; for as these, rightly used, may be of the greatest benefit, so, wrongly used, they may do an equal amount of harm  .[2]

References

[1] Aristotle, Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Translated by J. H. Freese., ed. J. H. Freese, vol. 22 (Medford, MA: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd., 1926), 1355a.

[2] Aristotle, Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Translated by J. H. Freese., ed. J. H. Freese, vol. 22 (Medford, MA: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd., 1926), 1355a–1355b.

Arthur Whimbey on Intelligence as a skill

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Arthur Whimbey’s definition of intelligence:

“Intelligence in an attentional/processing skill used in analyzing and mentally reconstructing relations. The distinguishing feature of this skill is breaking down complex relations (or problems) into small steps that can be dealt with fully. The major components of the skill are extensive search and careful apprehension of all details relevant to the relation; thorough utilization of all available information including prior knowledge; accurate comparisons; and sequential, step-by-step analysis and construction.” – Arthur Whimbey, Intelligence can be Taught (New York, NY: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1975), 120.

Whimbey saw intelligence as a generalized skill.

Here are two more insights from the book.

  1. Low-aptitude students have a tendency to approach problems passively. This is a habit, not a permanent state of their brain. He notes two problems: they use “one-shot thinking rather than extended, sequential construction of understanding; and second, there is a willingness to allow gaps of knowledge to exist…” (pp 55).
    This attitude leads to more frustration when they see other students “get it” and they don’t. The problem is that these students do not have a habit of thinking about problems. The solution is, apparently, to give them examples of thinking through problems out loud then ask them to imitate with the same problem and then with similar ones.
  2. Many students who cannot read well (this is back in 1975) simply were not taught using a phonics based approach (73-74). They cannot “decode” symbols into sounds. This is bad. They assume that since they have not seen the word (a sight-words approach) that they do not know how it sounds. This too, is a problem that can be fixed. I have heard otherwise intelligent adults with no reading disabilities struggle to read words with three or four syllables. This, in my estimation, can be traced to either a lack of phonics training or poor enforcement of phonics skills over time. If a young person gets away with parroting and faking at reading for just one year (which is easy to do in a class full of kids) then they could be perpetually behind.