While I never had the chance to study them, I’ve no doubt that Classical languages are a worthy, fulfulling, and useful exercise for those that do. It’s a shame, then, that they have such poor promoters as one Dan Ryan, who blathers on about “relativism”, lack of “cultural anchors” and other guff. Apparently, if we don’t study the works of Cicero students of Asian languages will be overwhelmed. Or something.
You can undoubtedly take this as another piece of culture war guff. But it’s also an example of another classic academic trope, which goes something along the lines of “..how can anyone call themselves an educated, rounded human being and not be familiar with X“, where X can be anything from the works of Shakespeare to the laws of thermodynamics. Of course, if you could assemble a roomful of people making such claims, the odds that they will be familiar with more than a tiny fraction of each other‘s collection of “essential” knowledge is generally pretty small.
So let’s use this opportunity to share each other’s lists of things you absolutely must have read/viewed/listened to/visited/understood. If I had to pick a couple of examples from my own discipline, there’s the Church-Turing thesis (which, to a very rough approximation, states that “all computers have exactly the same capabilities”). Or the fundamentals of computational complexity theory.
So what bits of essential knowledge are you all itching to share with the rest of us? C’mon, don’t be shy!
I think the ability to read and understand maps is very important, even though it would appear to be an obsolete skill now that we have GPS. (It isn’t, of course.)
Ability to cook a steak, medium rare.
It’s essential to know that Dan Ryan is a tosser.
Ryan writes as if he were ignorant of the fact that “the Classics” survived a liberal reformist broom at Oxbridge in the 1850s because it was successfully argued at the time that classical texts, being older, were more likely to be “authoritative” or even “inerrant”.*
If the reformists of the 1850s had been more determined “Classics” would have been swept away as a special discipline and subsumed, where they belong, under History.
Ryan’s entire ethnocentric “intellectual” edifice is built upon obscurantist foundations.
________
*Note needs to be made of the fact that Australian education rose in the shadow of English education. Ryan’s mum and dad were the products of an English knockoff.
obsolete skills. the high school kids i tutored seemed to think that being able to sketch a quadratic section without their graphing calculators was obsolete, too.
there’s definitely room for knowing how to do something before we jump to get technology to do it for us. It gives us intuition – that gut feeling when something looks right/wrong.
My list? Special Relativity, critical thinking, and what Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle ACTUALLY is.
Turing is so last century. A clarification please.Are you talking about the “known knowns” (to paraphrase D.Rumsfield). Where does aesthetics fit? Not everything is measurable or meaningful to anyone else but ourselves. In my seventies I now pretty much “know” what makes me tick – does this count?
Ability to recite Monty Python sketches, word for word.
Wave-particle duality (particularly as it relates to photons/light).
And what David Irving (no relation) said.
I’ve never really understood why Turing machines are so important to complexity theory. I get that a Turing machine is a universal computer – but what, in practice, have they actually taught us about real world computing? Any insights Robert?
Understanding of why things need to be spelled accurately, in order (a) to do more effective searches and (b) to stop terrorists getting on planes and setting fire to their underpants.
Can I just put in a word for Latin and Greek (neither of which I studied)? If more people understood how much of the English language is derived from either the one or the other, and applied that knowledge in practice, the current percentage of people who can spell ‘misogynist’, ‘relevant’ and ‘hypocrisy’ (to take three of the most commonly-occurring and commonly-misspelled online) would rise sharply.
A deeper, more nuanced understanding of the theory of evolution would be generally useful, I think.
Turing machines aren’t terribly important in and of themselves.
What’s important is the observation is that every computer, or formal description of a physically realizable computer, we’ve ever come up with, can’t compute anything more than a Turing machine can.
So if the system you have available to you can simulate a Turing machine, it can compute anything that is physically possible to compute (given enough time and space).
Things are connected to other things, often invisibly so.
a good understanding of the drug trade and the effects of various drugs, including the the fact that most drugs are dangerous and that making them illegal makes them more dangerous.
how to change nappies and put an upset child to sleep while on the phone to tech support.
I want to put a vote in for Plato, Socrates and the Sophists. much of my working life has involved the implementation of flawed plans based on an ideal, that involve a lot of questioning and , occasionally, a spirited defence that emphasises the positives while burying the negatives.
What Hannah’s Dad said …
Everything is connected and it falls to each of us to find out in what way(s), how much, how often and when it’s relevant to anything we should care about.
Of course, that does imply that one has to find develop very considerable knowledge and analytic skill.
I find etymology fascinating, but I get that others don’t. Number 2 son, sitting in front of the chatline on his PC with webcam going and looking like an extra from a movie about Eva Peron thought my rationale for interest most unpersuasive.
An understanding of the OODA loop and manoeuvre warfare – they apply to most things in life.
“So if the system you have available to you can simulate a Turing machine, it can compute anything that is physically possible to compute (given enough time and space).”
I guess that’s the bit that I’m not sure about – why is that important?
Old Irish (c.800 CE) word for a boozing, thuggish, warrior’s hair-style bearing an uncanny resemblance to the modern ‘mullet’: “cul-mong” (pronounced “cool mong”).
“If more people understood how much of the English language is derived from either the one or the other, and applied that knowledge in practice, the current percentage of people who can spell ‘misogynist’, ‘relevant’ and ‘hypocrisy’ (to take three of the most commonly-occurring and commonly-misspelled online) would rise sharply”
.
Alternatively, we could just all spell them incorrectly, in which case incorrect would be correct.
All I want people to know about our trade, Robert, is that software engineers are not systems administrators and vice versa. My holding a CS degree does not qualify me — either in knowledge or temperament — to fix your email, set up your printer or troubleshoot your network.
We should all know that knowledge is different from its representations. The representation of the knowledge is not the knowledge. If this were more commonly recognised then we might start to appreciate what knowledge really is.
Audio engineers should take note that the aphorism “you can’t polish a turd” – intended to enjoin everyone to spend 3 hours finding the right spot in the room to set up the drumset in a $200 per hour studio, then another five choosing mics and mic positions before anyone plays a note – has a rejoinder:
That may be so, but you can roll it in glitter.
Well, I was licky enough to study some Latin at school, but, unfortunately not Greek. But onto my list:
How to read, write and basic arithmetic.
Greek and Roman classic texts, not necessarily in the original.
ALL the Penguin classics. (It gives you a reasonable idea of where we came from.)
Sufficient geography to know the general outlines of world topography, climate etc, and where places are.
A broad knowledge, at least, of theatrical and film culture from across the world, not just Western.
History, history, history, (of course.)
A basic knowledge of the internet and how to use a computer.
Sufficient numeracy to be able to understand bills, accounts etc.
A good knowledge of the basic sciences, so if you read about it somewhere you can get it. (its also handy to know how the world, the universe and everything works.
Some comparative religion (so you don’t stay a bog-Irish bigot.)
An ability to think philosophically.
A basic knowlege of music, from medieval to the present, embracing all forms and styles. (including the most recent and including pop/rock etc.)
A knowlege of how the various political systems work (so you know what you’re doing when you go into the ballot-box.)
I’m sure I could think up heaps more, but that’ll do.
@16 Andrew: If you can predict the time it would take for a Turing machine to compute a problem, that problem is probably solvable. It’s a technical way of finding out just how computable some problems are. Some problems are known to be unsolvable, at least by current computing technology. It’s important to know that before wasting years, perhaps decades.
My most important knowledge? There’s always an agenda, no matter how stupid.
Oh, and knowing how to cook, look after your clothes and clean a house.
Two streams, stream one:
An understanding of what postmodernism is – and equally importantly: what it isn’t.
New criticism
Reader Response
Second & third wave feminism.
Stream two:
Rawls’ Theory of Justice.
Bentham.
Marx – you don’t have to agree, but worth understanding.
Dependency Theory.
That graphic design is about what works; it isn’t about what you personally think looks “nice”. That, and logo colours shouldn’t be chosen according to whether you’d wear a shirt in that colour.
Anna, what do you mean by that? Is this something akin to the difference between “looks pretty” and “conveys information effectively”, or are we talking about something like the difference between “your favourite food” or “the set menu you’d serve up to a function with 1000 people”?
1.
“The greatest thing you will ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return.”
Huge prize to those who know the source.
2.
“Never lie to children”
Yevteshenko.
I studied Latin for a few yers and loved it. While I feel I retain little it was incredibly useful when I studied the life sciences at uni.
Geography – to whit “The study of the earth and its features and of the distribution of life on the earth, including human life and the effects of human activity.”
– demography, biogeography, cultural landscapes
I wish I could go back a do a whole ‘nother degree again in Geog.
I believe geography is a fundamental primer to understanding who we are, people and place.
myriad74
“I believe geography is a fundamental primer to understanding who we are, people and place.”
Jared Diamond makes that point in “Collapse”.
All Nat King Cole lovers know where that lyric came from.
Essential knowledge: good manners. (Most people born before 1960 know about this)
and as a good geographer, naturally I have Diamond’s books Hannah’s Dad. Yes, he particuarly makes the point well I think in the intro parts of Guns, Germs and Steel
crap I forgot to add a basic understanding of feminism.
Don’t get me started, Jacques! My lady friend still occasionally rings me for desktop support for her Apple. (Despite the fact that I can barely even spell Apple, and have made it pretty clear that I don’t touch that stuff with my bare hands.) I’m still not sure she’s quite forgiven me for installing Linux on her PC some years ago – Windows was giving her some problems, and I couldn’t be fucked working out how to fix it.
Epistemology.
Everything you know starts with epistemology, even if you don’t know that (sic).
How to find magnetic south in the stars.
That’d be (approximate) True South, anthony. For magnetic south, you really need a compass, and it’s local.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Lazarus Long in “Time Enough for Love” by R.Heinlein
some things on that list I haven’t done, but there are a few that I feel good I’ve ticked off that list.
Survival techniques and first aid.
.
1) Not all specialists do operations. (“No I am not a brain surgeon, let me explain…”)
2) Disease is essentially variable and unpredictable. There is no such thing as “six months to live”. I am pretty sure that your doctor never said that, whatever you heard.
3) Scientific method. A special case of Mercurius’ point but an important one.
4) The word “dizzy” will make your doctor’s insides twist in chagrin. Trust me on this one.
Robert: both, sort of, and more. The idea that graphic design is about making things look pretty, and that therefore each opinion is as good as the next is frustrating and leads to inappropriate designs.
That, and the ability to let go of ideas that are tried and don’t work. Actually I think this would be a valuable lesson for all facets of life.
Essential knowledge in my profession: IANLAA*
Strip, clean and tune a slotcar.
Prevent bar brawls.
Handle high powered vehicles towing trailers over long distances in treachorous conditions while sleep deprived.
Basic carpentry, electrical, electronic, welding skills.
Get out of straitjacket.
*I am no longer an academic
Mercurius @ 35. Doesn’t it start at ontology? Epistemologies grow out of ontologies.
How a piano works.
All people should know that knowledge of health administration does not equal knowledge of diseases nor treatments.
Dr S, could you explain about ‘dizzy’? If what one has felt is what most people call dizziness, what other word should one use to one’s doctor?
—Paging Dr Cat—
I believe you are required on this thread.
Robert, while Melbourne melts and people and trains malfunction to our left, and to our right, you are having a purple patch on LP! Another fine topic thrown out for post-holiday fun.
I stayed in a fine hotel in London, Warwick Crescent to be specific, named The Colonnade. Much to recommend it, but chief was the fact that Alan Turing had lived there in a prior life. Blue plaque out front to mark the fact.
How to tie a bow tie.
How to make an appropriate three-minute speech for any occasion.
Or in my case, how to ensure any speech at such occasions is kept to no more than three minutes …
Speaking as possibly the only bona fide erstwhile postgraduate Classicist commenting at least thus far I have to say that I feel the ‘History’ component is undervalued by the non-specialists who frequently champion ‘the Classics’. Note that Dan Ryan is a lawyer. Coming to understand why Virgil is ‘Virgil’ – the canonical poet of the Latins – is a much more interesting topic to me at any rate than Virgil per se, as it is a fantastic microcosm of the 1st century B.C. to 1st century A.D. ‘revolution’ in Roman political and social affairs. And you know, discussion of canon-formation and that … its like a type of postmodern theory! (gasps).
And the meaning of those Latin words is probably not quite as fixed as Dan Ryan would like to imagine. A lot of the old assumptions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are being re-tested and re-debated and re-calibrated.
PC – I wish I knew what most people MEANT when they said dizziness. The problem is that the correlation between the subjective experience of dizziness and actual pathology is tenuous. If, on a good day, I manage to work out what it means the possibilities usually are; the sensation of vertigo (illusion of movement), the premonition of a faint and the early stages of certain forms of seizure. Not to mention the sense of unsteadiness brought on by a stiff neck, migraine, fear of falling or hyperventilating panic.And then we have the problem of translation from other languages; particularly Italian, Greek and Russian.
It isn’t that you shouldn’t tell your doctor you are dizzy, it’s that you should be prepared for the pained expression that statement will provoke.
It really is one of the few times that I start to believe in irreducible qualia.
So the fact that the word “dizzy” means that you are actually going to have to dip into your store of expert knowledge to ask distinguishing questions about the symptom rather than have the precise pathology laid out for you by the patient is sufficient to elicit a pained expression?
Does this mean that if the patient happened to use the word “vertigo”, you wouldn’t ask any more questions, but would just presume that they were using it correctly?
I’ve suspected before, and am now utterly convinced, that I would not like to have you as my GP. Asking a rigorous set of nested questions in order to elicit a full medical history of the complaint is your fucking job. Just do it.
In his privileging of the cultures and languages of Europe over those of Asia, my guess is that Dan Ryan has a lot in common with the Larvatus Prodeo readership. Reading the posts and comments on this website, you could be forgiven for thinking that all significant culture, literature, and so on originated from the people of one small, western corner of the Eurasian landmass (and their descendents). To take one example, on this thread plenty of non-English books were mentioned, but virtually all of these came from that small corner of Eurasia – and this is despite the fact that Chinese, Japanese, and Indian literary traditions, for example, stretch back over a thousand years. The only exception to this that comes to mind is Paul Burns’ spirited championing, both in that thread and elsewhere, of Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji. (Actually, I see Paul’s just taken a similarly inclusive approach above.)
So, for starters, I think people should step out of the European mental cage and embrace the whole of human culture as it actually exists in the world. (I’d also recommend the poems of Wang Wei.)
As to my own academic area, LP readers might be interested in the following pieces of quantitative sociology:
Hadas Mandel and Moshe Semyonov (2006) “A Welfare State Paradox: State Interventions and Women’s Employment Opportunities in 22 Countries” American Journal of Sociology, 111(6), May, pages 1910-1949.
Walter Korpi and Joakim Palme (1998) “The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality, and Poverty in the Western Countries” American Sociological Review, 63(5), October, pages 661-687.
Wow, Tigtog, that was a little more anger than I had expected.
I do actually know my job. Hell, I’m actually a Neurologist, dizziness is my problem. The difficulty is that the cycle of questions you glibly suggest are often uninformative, excruciatingly variable both between individuals and on retest in the same individual and often people find them unanswerable. Dizziness is, quite frankly, bloody difficult to tease out.
The point was to demonstrate that something one feels should be bloody obvious isn’t. Not sure that quite deserved the spray, although I could easily be missing something.
I’m with “if it hurts when you do that, stop doing it”. In any number of feilds. Think of it as the scientific method for dummies. Combined, perhaps with “understand what pain is and learn to distinguish between the types”, because “I’m bored and that makes me think about food” is a different pain from “I feel bones grinding when I move my knee”.
I find it hard to disentangle the “when you have the opportunity, take it” type advice from more specific opportunities that I’ve had and taken. Sure, it’d be quite nice if the average cyclist was interested enough in the subject to oil their goddamn chain every now and then (yes, I’m working as a bike mechanic right now), but on the list of “things everyone must know”? Perhaps “understand the basic maintenance required by all the things you depend upon”. Specifically including non-mechanical maintenance, like talking to the other people in your house from time to time.
Specific educational things… not so much. They’re very local. For instance “learn what a hungry crocodile looks like” is useful in Darwin but not so much in Hobart, let alone Amsterdam. Likewise Latin… better to learn Spanish or Mandarin (for quite different reasons) unless you’re likely to move to 18th century Europe in the near future. But learning at least two languages fluently, yup. Plus a computer programming language and at least one jargon.
James Rice,
apparently I don’t have sufficient command of the English language to negotiate the meaning in your second abstract.
‘Dan Ryan is a general counsel to a leading information technology company. He has worked in Hong Kong and China for 10 years.’
Exactly the background I look for in someone advising about Australian education. Make him and Miranda Devine our education Czar and Czarina.
I was lucky that, still a teen in 1960, I was introduced to the best of all self-mastery learning tools – a handy check-sheet to ensure I could, if I applied it, systematically master any topic, subject or discipline with which my brain could cope, and for which I had (or could learn) the core skills – Bloom’s Taxonomies, especially of the cognitive domain. It is an essential tool for designing web-based & printed materials. As a student & teacher, I found it invaluable. It’s also the best check-list of “Have I learnt / can I regurgitate …” I know.
I hope those who haven’t encountered it before find it as useful as I did & still do.
References & URLs at the bottom
———————
All the everyone needs to know … about my field of expertise is useless unless the learner has very good:
* basic literacy (& numeracy) in all core learning areas – language, maths/sciences, history & civics, geography, economics & finance, arts (all) and philosophical disciplines (philos & mythology, ethics, logic) – to master further learning in any discipline / specialism
* research skills; ability to analyse, synthesise & evaluate knowledge; organise & present it in a coherent, logical manner; defend it in argument and debate, and revise knowledge in the light of such debate, and later modifications of knowledge – ie accepting that knowledge is always tentative & open to challenge and change
* a love of & joy in learning; a thirst for knowledge; a need to know & understand everything
IOW, the essential mastery in all learning is not of content but ability to locate, understand, evaluate & use content in a systematic way – in whatever depth suits the learner’s needs throughout her/his life. Given such core mastery of learning’s skills and, at a later stage, mastery of systematic approaches to learning (see below), the student becomes a Master of Learning – anything!
*Mastery of systematic approaches (aka Bloom’s Taxonomies) without which no kid should IMO be allowed leave school! The taxonomies are cyclical both in acquiring new knowledge, and in going ever deeper into specifics of a branch of knowledge.
Happy New year all!
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains: The Three Types of Learning This is a general overview.
A teacher’s personal overview of the Taxonomies & their background
For a fuller (& more systematic) coverage of the three domains – especially the essential cognitive domain Bloom’s Taxonomies Notice that knowledge of multiple theories, approaches & paradigms appears early in a sequence!
Multiple disgrammatic images of Bloom’s Taxonomy
A google search of Bloom’s Taxonomy will turn up masses of references from the simple to advanced argument & counter theories.
Oh just to answer the question:
- Everyone should have some sort of overview of Eurasian history from 404 B.C to the present.
- Modern history from 1700 on in some more detail. Everyone should know what decade the concept of a unified ‘Germany’ was finalised, for example, or what the Meiji Restoration is and what its consequences were and are.
- Basic world geography.
- Newtonian physics. Forget Heisenberg, IMO to most people “F=MA” is a complete mystery.
- Evolution. Everyone needs to have read Darwin ‘On the Origin Of Species’.
- How myth works. What is its function? What are its forms? Everyone should be able to identify at least six modern, non-religious, myths in their contemporary society, explain what they are, and how they work as myth.
- What are stories? How to understand fiction. What is poetry? Does it have to rhyme? How does a novel work? How to read a film, a documentary, a TV drama series (and what the differences are), a news broadcast. Are “factual” conventions of story-telling unproblematic or not?
- Rhetoric
- How to engage in a critical analysis. What are the biases, assumptions, who is the author, what are the sources, what are the author’s interests?
- How to light a fire without matches. How to find water in the bush. How to navigate to safety without a map. How to read a map.
- How to swim. How to locate and avoid a rip. What to do if you’re caught in a rip.
Dr S, it may not have been what you meant to convey, but what you wrote did imply that the patient should know more about the different pathologies underlying dizziness themselves (since this thread is about what “everybody needs to know” etc), because them not knowing makes your job hard. Which implication brought out my tiniest violin.
If what you meant to convey is that “everybody should know that dizziness is actually a lot more complicated than you might think” in the context of not expecting neurologists to have a simple answer justlikethat, then you failed.
How about everything about the universe?
which also addresses James Rice’s point (atho I’m not sure how geography can be seen as being defined to a western viewpoint, mine certainly wasn’t).
Thanks Myriad! The final bits have at last been published. Must get my copies. Maybe online…
Sorry to have conveyed that.
In the context of the thread I did not feel this to be the case.
I think people know their Freudians as well as Paul Burns. Well done Paul.
And, I myself am rather good at the missing Freudians, the ones that rest in the liminal space, the in between, the ellipsis, the absence which indicates a bleeding presence.
Insert “should” in there.
Specific educational things… not so much. They’re very local. For instance “learn what a hungry crocodile looks like” is useful in Darwin but not so much in Hobart, let alone Amsterdam. Likewise Latin… better to learn Spanish or Mandarin (for quite different reasons) unless you’re likely to move to 18th century Europe in the near future. But learning at least two languages fluently, yup. Plus a computer programming language and at least one jargon.
Saying ‘look out for that hungry crocodile’ in Latin wouldn’t be a particularly useful skill in Darwin or Rome, but it would be kind of interesting. But quite aside from questions about what knowledge is ‘useful’ and ‘profitable’, and what is merely learning for the sake of increasing one’s wisdom, to satisfy curiosity, and to change perspectives on history – well, learning ancient languages like Latin or Greek would be very useful. It would allow access to a wealth of literature from many different periods of time, many of them key periods in the development of modern civilised institutions. And also, as has been pointed out, it illuminates the study of modern languages in many ways – giving practical demonstrations in grammar, etymology, bla bla bla bla bla.
But quite aside from questions about what knowledge is ‘useful’ and ‘profitable’, and what is merely learning for the sake of increasing one’s wisdom, to satisfy curiosity, and to change perspectives on history – well, learning ancient languages like Latin or Greek would be very useful.
Learning English would be useful for me, it seems! I meant that learning an ancient language has purposes beyond the obvious – ie, earning money, etc.
Tyro Rex @60: “How to swim. How to locate and avoid a rip. What to do if you’re caught in a rip.”
You forgot a few more.
How about including how and where to dig a snow hole in a blizzard? How to tell if the snow is likely to avalanche (i.e. has a slip layer in it – what does it look like and how is it caused). Where to travel safely on a snowy mountainside to avoid being caught in an avalanche. What to do if you are caught in one (swim for your life – yes, really). How to find someone who has been caught in one. How to treat hypothermia. Etc. Etc.
Not v. useful in Australia admittedly! However, fascinating and useful in the various alps (European, Andean, Norwegian, etc) or other snowy parts.
It was no end of fascinating to discover how useless my knowledge of how to travel safely in outback Australia was in the depths of winter in the Norwegian alps. They have their own detailed set of must-have, must-do, must-remember, etc when heading off the beaten track.
Totally different, and not to be underestimated in either case. Our knowledge of how to survive could be fairly culturally-specific to where we grew up?
Listening…Watching…Dreaming.
Oh, and translating “whatever” (from the Latin).
Three chord wonders, esp the 12 bar.
It aint what you know; it’s what you don’t know that matters. Knowing that you don’t know, and knowing or having a fair idea about to how to find IT out. With a modicum of skepticism and well developed winnowing skills. Picking who might have a vague idea as opposed to those who don’t is also of assistance.
Potato ergo sum?
Just in response to Roger at comment 57:
In short, I suppose the main argument presented in Korpi and Palme’s article is that certain social policies which you might expect to reduce income inequality in fact increase income inequality in the long term. One example they discuss is the targeting of welfare state benefits (such as old age pensions) at low-income groups (as happens in Australia). You might expect that low-income targeting would increase the extent to which the welfare state reduces income inequality, since benefits are allocated to those with the lowest incomes. Korpi and Palme, however, argue that low-income targeting creates a clear divide within the population between high-income groups (who pay for the benefits through their taxes but don’t receive them) and low-income groups (who receive the benefits but don’t pay for them). Over time this divide within the population leads both to the stigmatisation of those who receive welfare state benefits and to the undermining of political support for these benefits, which in turn leads these benefits to be cut back or allowed to wither away. In other words, the size of the redistributive budget decreases (by “redistributive budget”, Korpi and Palme mean the government budget allocated to welfare state benefits). This decrease in the size of the redistributive budget leads to a decrease in the extent to which the welfare state reduces income inequality, since this is a function of both the size of the redistributive budget and the degree of low-income targeting. Empirically, Korpi and Palme build on their observation that the extent to which the welfare state reduces income inequality is generally lower in countries in which welfare state benefits are highly targeted (such as Australia) and higher in countries in which welfare state benefits are not highly targeted (such as Sweden).
Anyway, that’s my rushed summary. The published version of the article is best, but an earlier draft is freely available here.
In my field:
1 – The basics of macroeconomic and microeconomic theory, an outline of their historical development, the assumptions that underpin them and the different schools of thought.
2 – The concept of constrained optimisation
3 – At least some familiarity with statistics and how to identify a spurious correlation.
4 – An understanding of finance
In other fields (not exhaustive):
1 – An understanding of the different schools of political philosophy and their historical development and antecedents
2 – A basic understanding of the natural sciences
3 – Some understanding of the world’s religious traditions and their evolution over time
4 – Geography
5 – The constitution, framework of our legal and poltical institutions and some sense of how that relates to institutions in other countries
6 – History – without it you cannot understand how the past came to be the present and how that process is likely to shape the future
Some foundation skills
1 – Good oral and written communication skills
2 – Numeracy
3 – The ability to see things from others’ point of view
4 – Critical reasoning and problem solving skills
5 – Common sense
Via collins @48: “I stayed in a fine hotel in London, Warwick Crescent to be specific, named The Colonnade…”
Better half and myself stayed in a fine little log cabin at Cradle Mountain over Xmas. As far as we know, nobody famous has stayed there, and there are no plaques.
But hey, who cares! The log fire was just great in the evening, with a spot of Muscat after a wander in the bush and a nice meal. It is a very peaceful place, and hopefully nobody famous will ever find it and ruin its secrets.
Elise: Alan Turing wasn’t a particularly wealthy or famous man in his own lifetime, and if I recall correctly the hotel being referred to was just an apartment block at the time Turing lived in it.
If you’re not familiar with his life and work, the wikipedia entry is a good place to start.
Freud. Fuck!
Robert @77, whether Turing was famous then or later doesn’t affect my comparison.
Neither does the fact that the apartment block became subsequently famous, and had a plaque erected accordingly.
“Much to recommend it, but chief was the fact that Alan Turing had lived there…”
Why do we do things? Because someone famous did them also? Perhaps a bit of glory will rub off? Is that why the hotels love to mention their celebrity visitors?
That homelessness is like an iceberg, you only notice the street people in the inner city, really there’s much more and it’s more complex than you think. Oh, and that Maslow was only half right.
Sheep are clever. And I mean really,truly clever.
And if you want to grow veggies, you have to water them. Every day when it’s hot. And twice a day when it is very hot.Veggies are easy to grow, but you have to take care of them.And if you do the rewards will be enormous, and your body will thank you for the really good tucker.And if you live in the bush, a chainsaw that starts when you want it to saves a lot of grief(not to mention bad language and bad temper).
How to calculate any required target number for a die roll from the given THAC0 for a particular class.
How to resolve any of the major three actions (skill use, melee/missile attacks, or magic) without constantly bothering the DM.
When to ask “are we all fully healed yet?” and when to shut up and let the DM describe the situation.
Looking at the wonderful efflorescence of really useful and interesting stuff in this thread (much of which I do not know, and I hope I am educated), I think I know what Dan Ryan is pining for. Now I realise this amounts to an attempt to divine another person’s motives (something I hate when it is done to me), so if Dan Ryan is reading, he’s free to take this with a pantec full of salt.
There is something very beguiling about the thought of a population (of a country, say) where everyone has a common fund of ideas and knowledge upon which they draw. It makes conversation easier. Some countries (eg France) still strive for this in their education systems, while others devolve education down to the local level, which means people finish up knowing all sorts of different things, often wildly divergent. Time was when walking into a French classroom in any part of the country at the same time of the year would see the teacher writing identical stuff on the blackboard. It does give French people a very distinctive and strong ‘common culture’. This is not without merit, but it is not, as far as I can see, something that has ever been done in Anglophone countries.
As to the classics, I have a Latin major and am also a lawyer. I suspect my background is similar to Dan Ryan’s. At one stage my Latin was good enough to read the Aeneid in the original, without a dictionary. Alas that level of skill has long since wilted
. I have no Greek, and have only ever read Greek writers in translation. Latin is useful for the reasons that PC outlined above. I was a terrible speller (I am dyslexic) and it made me a much better speller, for which I am grateful. It also made me a better lawyer, for Cicero (who is mentioned in the post) was first and foremost a brilliant trial lawyer. He’d have liked to have been known as a philosopher, but with the exception of the Stoics, Romans and philosophy didn’t mix very well. His trial speeches, however, and his Rumpole-esque determination to ‘always defend’ always impressed me. He only undertook one prosecution, of a corrupt provincial governor — in Sicily, no less — but it made his name and freed him from the Roman equivalent of plaintiff law. Every half-decent barrister is in Cicero’s debt for a great chunk of the rhetorical flourishes we use every day. Winning the sympathy of the jury? Check (Roman courtroom procedure was adversarial, like the common law system; the inquisitorial elements now common in Europe came much later). Mnemonic tricks to ensure that you cover all the relevant bits? Check. Remembering that you are in court not for you but for something larger? Check. There’s a lot more, too, but that’s what I can remember at short notice.
Maybe the take home lesson from Dan Ryan’s piece is that lawyers should learn Latin so they can read Cicero’s trial speeches, and that Australia should adopt an education system like that in France. Of course, I’m being cheeky…
Apologies for long comment.
We were just talking about the importance of seeing both sides of the story from a legal perspective at our place the other day.
I would really like to communicate some basic legal concepts to lay people so that it isn’t as confusing and intimidating. But how to boil it down to its essence? I can’t even think what concept I’d like to choose as one everyone should learn. Of course, I really love Property and Contract law so I’d probably start with something from that.
I deeply wish I’d done classics. I think I would have loved it because I love words, and I love learning the origin of words. It’s helpful to have some knowledge of where words come from, and if you have a little knowledge of something like Latin or Greek, it makes unfamiliar words easier to guess.
Actually, I would prefer to keep all the really important stiff to myself so I will have an advantage over the rest of you lesser mortals. However, since secrecy is a bit lonely I’ll share a few tidbits. For example, it is very important to know when the wrong question is being asked: This allows you to put down the asker. Any other benefits that arise from asking a more productive question are a bonus.
For example, I remember reading about some geography prof complaining that the shortage of time given to geography in schools meant that “some people didn’t even understand how glaciers were formed.” Two things struck me here. Firstly, if all these old bores had there way education would have become a very shallow way of helping people become experts in trivial pursuit. Secondly, two key aims of good education is to inspire curiosity and to provide the tools to pursue this curiosity. I am sure I am not the only one who has learned most of what they know about glaciers outside of formal education.
So perhaps it is worth asking what is really important for modern education and what has to be taught to achieve these things?
My view is that two of the crucial things are learning how to learn and how to evaluate and deal with new ideas and information. Part of this is learned from subjects such as reading and statistics that deal directly with these skills. However, other things a learned by studying a limited number of subjects in depth instead of trying to learn a little about a lot.
So what subjects should be included in the possible list and why?
Another language. It doesn’t matter which. And it doesnt matter if you’re crap at it. Its inherently enriching, and will teach as much about your own culture as those of its speakers.
Relatedly, I also think traveling without learning some of the basics of the local lingo is not so much rude – as pointless.
Freud is in evidence tonight.
“So what bits of essential knowledge are you all itching to share with the rest of us?”
While living in Japan I learnt that many japanese don’t accept that you can attain a complete knowledge about any subject.
Regardless of your expertise there is always more to learn or to experience, some further encounter that will reveal more information so your knowledge can deepen.
Hopefully learning continues all our lives.
I would appreciate it greatly if the moderator would correct that spelling mistake!
[Done!]
JohnD @85: “For example, it is very important to know when the wrong question is being asked: This allows you to put down the asker.”
On the other hand, perhaps it would be useful for you to ask the wrong question?
This allows you the alternative possibility of sending them on a wild goose chase… How much fun is that?!!!
If you’re talking about programming then polymorphism and inheritance and why and when to use them are probably the most important things I know. In 15 years of programming I’ve never used or seen anyone else use any knowledge directly related to a Turing machine. If it’s there it’s damn well hidden.
“Actually, I would prefer to keep all the really important stiff to myself”
Good idea. Anything else may lead to charges being laid (laid, gedit, fnar).
JohnD, Speaking of asking questions, you should also be careful not to reveal your line of thought by asking too many detailed questions.
As a researcher for Shell in the Netherlands eons ago, we were advised when attending international conferences not to ask leading questions at presentations. It might cause “leakage” of strategic advantage, by framing the problem for others.
It seemed to me that as much leaked-in as leaked-out! But there you go. The egocentric, competitive world of large successful companies.
Energy is conserved.
And Burt Bacharach & Hal David are the best songwriters who ever lived. If you don’t know why, find out. If you don’t understand after searching, keep searching.
94 comments so far, and nobody’s mentioned Shakespeare! Well, let me be the first to put in a word for the Bard. Until you’re familiar with the major plays, you’ll never realise how much they underpin Western culture.
“He went beyond all precedents and invented the human as we continue to know it.” – William Bloom.
And from my academic interests, I’d like to nominate game theory. Such a cool way of analysing interactions and strategy. Three cheers for John Forbes Nash, Jr.
#28 Hannah’s Dad. I’m pretty sure your quote in 1 is the punchline in the song, Nature Boy. I imagine there’s a version on youtube.
Meself: I felt that we could’ve avoided a bit of economic rationalist pain in the 80s and 90s if a lot more people had read understood Dickens’s “Hard Times”. It seemed to me that a lot that was advocated had been tried a century earlier.
I’ve never had much call for inheritence and polymorphism, Patrickb. (After all, FORTRAN doesn’t support either … )
All jokes aside, the Turing Machine is an extremely good model of how a computer actually does things (without all those tiresome 1s and 0s).
Patrickb: Turing machines aren’t a practical device.
But the fact that you can write the same programs in any program language you care to name, or it’s possible to emulate any computer on any other computer given enough information about the computer you’re trying to emulate, or that solving scheduling problems efficiently is difficult no matter what computer you use – that’s (broadly speaking) the Church-Turing thesis in action.
Actually, at the moment round our place, a sound knowledge of plumbing and gasfitting is looking darn-near indispensable.
Paulus @ #95, the advocacy of Shakespeare is called ‘fighting a rear-guard action’. Everyone says ‘Great books wah wah art wah the classics blahdeblah,’ but when you get them lined up on University Open Day with little Ermintrude in tow, they start asking questions like ‘But what sort of job will she get with an Arts degree?’
I like that quotation about what makes us human as we know it. It has a ring of truth, in the same way the the Victorians invented childhood and Christmas as we know them.
I’d like to address the substantive point that Dan Ryan was trying to make, but I’m having trouble finding it. His article about the importance of the Classics amounted to little more than a series of nostrums (sic) ((sic)).
Speaking as undoubtedly the worst-performing Latin student in the 1992 HSC (that is not a rhetorical exaggeration, it’s an official result, you should see my transcript), I can vouch for the fact that even an appalling knowledge of Latin is helpful for becoming an articulate performer in a range of Latinate languages and to navigate some cultural descendants thereof.
Not much use for other language and cultural groups, however. Nor is my Japanese language acquisition of much help in understanding Mainland Asian or Middle Eastern cultural contexts. I work with a range of Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Korean students, and Japanese language/culture is as alien to them as it is to a native English speaker – including the written script, despite myths to contrary.
There’s nothing particularly harmful about Ryan’s hypothesis, but it falls an awfully long way short of being the universal panacea he would like it to be. I think the point has been well made up-thread that a culture in which multitudes of people have multitudinous educational experiences and expertises is a stronger mixture than a mono-educational focus. The Napoleonic modernist vision of an Empire in which all French students are learning the same concepts from the same course-books at the same time, from Paris to Noumea, has not proven empirically superior to any of the more diverse formulations that exist in many other nations.
Hoomans muddle through their educational landscape, retain the bits they find useful and the rest is swiftly discarded. And I learnt more of the periodic table of the elements from Tom Lehrer than from Mr.Casey.
One other thing that would well-serve the educational landscape is for commentators to ditch the insufferable attitude of smugness with which they assert that *their* educational experience is so vastly superior to *yours*. We all need the humility to recognise that those of us who perhaps do so well in today’s society are the happy benefactors of the fact that our society rewards certain endeavours that happen to match with our natural aptitudes and interests. If we lived in a society where the ability to tie a net and carve a spear were the most sought-after skills, I’d be living in the worst mud hut with the leakiest roof. Lucky for me, I was born in a time and place where a facility with words, words, words, is economically and socially advantageous.
PS – On a parochial note, if Ryan was fair dinkum about our kiddies learning the *real* cultural roots of our “Western” society, he’d be a passionate advocate for us all to learn Hebrew and/or Sanskrit. Like many *common* scholars, he finds the Hellenic dimension of our culture more compelling and relevant than the original roots in the Levant, Middle-East. If only youse all had a decent Hebraic education, you’d be better acquainted with the real fount of our cultural values
Incorrect, Mercurius.
Here is the harm in Dan Ryan’s hypothesis.
That wasn’t the reason at all. Latin remained as a sine qua non for entry because of the continuing political power of classicists in the colleges.
After 1850 a large proportion of the Headmasters of the leading public schools of England were classics scholars. These schools emphasised the importance of Classics. These schools were the source of the overwhelming bulk of Oxbridge students until well after WWII.
After 1860, Oxbridge came to depend more and more on taxpayer funding for its operations. The vast bulk of taxpayers sent their children to schools that either did not teach the classics or could not teach them to the satisfaction of Oxbridge. Thus, the children of these taxpayers were automatically disqualified from attending the most prestigious and best funded universities.
Thus, Classics became the means by which social goods were distributed upwards as an almost hereditary right.
Classics were the door bitch in the employ of the possessing classes.
Dan Ryan harmfully obfuscates that fact.
#28 Hannahs Dad Nature Boy by Nat King Cole
Possibly not just Classics, Katz. I don’t know about Oxbridge but here in Oz in the early 60s to matriculate you had to have high marks in English, Latin, French and (this was the cruncher for me) Maths I and II. Those of us of the lower orders/working class who had to opt for General Maths because we were semi-numerate had no chance of getting into uni, even if the only qualification we were interested in was an Arts degree. I think my recollection and the reading of its significance is correct.
Quite true, PB.
As I said upthread, Australian curricula were for a long time cut-price knock-offs of English curricula.
In Australia university entrance qualifications still act as means by which social goods are redistributed from the poor to the rich.
Robert, are you trying to compile some sort of “National Curriculum”?!
Looks like you’re almost there…
Robbo, a working kick-back arrestor is also necessary for said chainsaw.
Trust me on this.
All because you don’t understand something doesn’t make it stupid.
In my field, a realisation that cinema didn’t start with Tarantino, even Scorsese. The understanding that there is a rich century long history to tap into and that it can be approached read and used in varying ways.
In practical terms, some basic arithmetic please, such as knowing how to work out percentages.
BTW, vale Eric Rohmer, a great filmmaker whose work is marked with wit, humanity and pictorial loveliness.
Lots of stuff I wouldn’t be without – a basic understanding of the principles of logic, scientific method, ecology and evolution are pretty widely useful, I reckon.
Probably the most useful skill I have learned is the ability to “manufacture” interest in a topic which I have found initially uninteresting, in order to learn more about it.
The most useful insight is that the world isn’t necessarily as one perceives it (ie perception does not equal reality).
Point taken, Katz @ 102 and others! I was aware of this but glossed over it in my reading of Ryan. Thanks for the reminder.
TimT, learning to read English gives one access to the vast perspectives of history. If you learn to read and speak Chinese (whichever spoken form you prefer) you can both participate in a living culture *and* read history in the original language. Not only that, it’s a history that’s not much translated into English, unlike that “very important” snippet that’s written in Greek or Latin. At least Greek is still a useful spoken language albeit only in a tiny corner of the world.
Though it is true that learning a little of one of the contributing languages of English can be helpful, I find the converse almost as true – having a decent English vocabulary gives a significant head start when learning almost any European language. I was somewhat amused to discover that my construction “homo ped plumbium” that just sounded right is also reasonably correct (as in “save the lead footed ape, they’re driving themselves to extinction”).
I’m not sure that a love of learning can be taught, and certain it cannot be instilled at school. As with so many educational fundamentals, it’s what happens at home that’s the key. Schools can suppress the love, but I’m not sure they can do much more than encourage it.
Katz, indeed. I was pulled out of school at 15 because my Australian Irish stepmother (straight out of the Brothers Grimm) thought I would lose my immortal soul if I got an education. No kidding! When I ran away from home I went to TAFE to get the Leaving Certificate, even there the subjects you sat for didn’t exactly propel you towards a uni education: General Maths, Economics, Ancient and Modern History, Geography and English. Mind you it awoke my love of history, and I eventually did get to uni as a mature age student,after a great deal of autodidactic self education and thanks to Gough Whitlam. (I would never have been able to afford a university education if I’d had to pay for it.) Nor did I ever regret the years before uni where I educated myself or was guided by others in my reading (thanks to the people I met at drama school. Still, I wonder about the masses of people out there missing out on the oportunity of a uni education, simply because they were never given the chance or couldn’t/can’t afford it.
This is fun, as long as no-one takes it seriously.
My list of essentials for understanding your world:
1) That life is a series of problems in constrained optimisation, so opportunity costs are as important as direct ones.
2) What the laws of thermodynamics mean (especially the second law – the subtle one). Anyone who understood this would have known instantly that the recent Firepower scam was indeed a scam, plus they would understand a lot about how the universe works generally.
3) Darwinian evolution, especially its ontological implications.
4) Algebra, ideally with calculus (helps with (1) and (2), BTW).
5) Modern world history.
6) Basic double-entry accounting, and its relation to (1).
They’re the essentials, but the list of “very usefuls” would be far longer.
Again, quite true PB.
You write of a time that had seemed to pass. Yet, it is returning again.
It reminds me of so-called “post-feminism” whose proponents behave as if the struggles of feminism are in some profound way irrelevant to the present day.
When characters like Dan Ryan start asserting the supposed privileged position of the classics in curricula, I hear doors slamming.
I have nothing at all against the study of the Graeco-Roman world. But the position of this study in a golden ghetto is intellectually and politically offensive to me.
If we wish to understand English better, then teach English better.
The study of any non-English language provides insights into the nature of English.
The moral and eschatological worlds of the West owes much more to the world of the Bible than to the Graeco-Roman worlds. Yet this world is hardly studied at all under unsteepled roofs. One reason for this is that organised religion frowns at a scientific study of that world. the other reason is that students have been thoroughly bored by the way that world has been presented by organised religion.
Yes, but no amount of ‘teach English better’ could provide the particular quality of insight you get from understanding that certain words are related to certain other words, via (mostly) Greek and Latin roots. Misogyny, gynaecology, philology, philanthropy, misanthropy, misogyny. Etc.
Indubitably true. But again, Japanese or Serbo-Croat, whatever other invaluable insights they might afford, don’t actually give you a set of keys to English the way that Greek and Latin do.
This is a bit of a worry, all this. I am, like, yay close to signing up for classes.
Well, yes.
Could it be that the better teaching of English may incorporate the teaching of Greek, Latin, Saxon and Norse?
Greek and Latin have provided English with many words identifying things.
The genius of English is that it incorporates words identifying things from everywhere. Japanese: kamikaze, hara-kiri, honcho, ninja.
Identifiers are one thing. Structure is quite different and more profound. Structurally, English has little in common with Greek or Latin — tenses, moods, word order, gender, etc. When we learn Greek, Latin, or any number of other languages, we are struck by how structurally different English is from all other languages, not just Japanese or Serbo-Croat. One does not have to learn only Greek or Latin to discover those differences.
Seeing the far superior contributions of others, I feel I should contribute vocationally as well:
Knowing that *not* communicating is also communciation; sometimes not sending out that press release, email, web site is the better option.
An awareness of how little attention people pay to anything.
An understanding that editing is like triage: Will it live without your changes? Don’t change it. Will it die anyway? Don’t bother. Improving one sentence in a puddle shit, or in something that’s already fine, is not worth the loss of good will it entails from your submitter.
As a kind of corollary: if you get shit work, it’s because they didn’t understand the brief. This means either a) you gave a shitty or contradictory brief, or b) they’re stupid. It’s mostly a).
TimT @67, always assuming that there is a Latin word for crocodile.
The trouble with everyone going their own way with spelling is that you can end up with four children with the same parents having their surnames spelled entirely differently from each other and their parents’. This actually happened in a branch of my family, according to the cousin who was engaged in family research.
Bad enough with family names, just imagine the chaos with legal documents, shipping, flight plans and paths, both civilian and military, medical and any other texts, road signs and trips to the shops to name just a few.
Correct spelling is without doubt crucial in any language or discipline.
Well, I think that knowing how to take up/in/out your own pants is very useful knowledge.
Also people should be taught a lot more about the human reproductive system than they currently are.
And in terms of professional specialist knowledge that shouldn’t be quite so specialist, I firmly believe that the skills to *really* read a rich novel are invaluable in a huge variety of ways.
Or, to be deliberately contrary about it Katz, one could suggest that English’s impoverished ability to articulate various emotional states and qualia (I blame the Saxons) has forced us to import schadenfreude, savoir-faire, ennui, deja-vous, compadre, schmooze, mish-mash, schmuck, avatar, karma, corroboree, nadir, safari and, er…ZERO etc. from around the Empire, eh what?
DI(nr)
“After all, FORTRAN doesn’t support either …”
And in 15 years of programming I’ve never used FORTRAN (or LISP or Prolog or any of those interesting but atrophied languages).
“Yes, but no amount of ‘teach English better’ could provide the particular quality of insight ”
Yeah but, this is like saying that knowing about the Turing machine helps your application programming. It doesn’t. Teach the subject first then let the interested dig into the substrata. You risk boring everyone to death because they can’t see the relevance.
To be honest, PatrickB, I haven’t used FORTRAN for close to 20 years, or Prolog for over 10. (I was just fucking with your head.) Most of the little programming I do these days is in what might be thought of as a dialect of ADA.
Actually, PatrickB @ 122, you’d be surprised at the extent to which the kind of deep understanding the Turing Machine provides does help your application programming.
I perceive that comment as being agreeable (agréable, Merc.
The extraordinary thing about English is that it was evolved by a pack of subsistence farmers and warriors and existed for nearly three centuries as the language of the lower, vassal orders of the Norman French.
Those aren’t cultural environments that places a huge premium on the nuances of emotional states.
Those words came along as they were required, thanks to everyone and anyone who had a good one.
Laura @ #119, indeed. I initially drafted a list for this thread — it ended up too long and earnest to post — of What Should be Taught in Skool, and it included ‘How to make, alter, mend and otherwise take care of clothes’ and ‘How to use contraceptives properly’. Like you I have been shocked, shocked I tell you, by the ignorance of some (and by no means commensurate with their intelligence) about the workings of their bits, and by extension of their bodies in general. Shocked. A Law/Arts graduate of my acquaintance once had to be persuaded, by means of a somewhat graphic diagram, that she was wearing her diaphragm upside down.
Also about the novel-reading but of course I would say that wouldn’t I.
I’m starting to think I need to go back to school and start again. Maybe the anxiety dreams about turning up 20 years late to the HSC physics exam without studying might make sense then.
Chanelling the ghost of James Joyce, I think everyone should read these two short stories:
“How Much Land Does a Man Need?” by Leo Tolstoy
“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway
“How Much Land Does a Man Need?” was described by James Joyce as the “greatest story that the literature of the world knows”. He also apparently thought “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” was one of the best short stories ever written.
(Versions of these stories can be found on the internet – but they always look so much more attractive when professionally typeset and printed on paper.)
Patrickb, I wasn’t necessarily advocating teaching it, what with being a realist and having already had as much experience of teaching as I want in this life. But I was arguing that it helps understanding, as do many other things that we can’t all grasp and by which some of us are indeed bored to death, like me and computers for instance.
But I regard that as a deficiency in myself, not in the body of knowledge. The idea that education is about spoon-feeding big bangs and primary colours with bells and whistles on them to baby solipsists for whom the value of everything is judged by its “relevance” to them is not one that I share. I think education ought to be about the world, not about the limitations of the coddled little ego of the student.
Woman drives home with dead pensioner wedged in windscreen
Basic empathy? But maybe you can’t learn that.
“I think education ought to be about the world, not about the limitations of the coddled little ego of the student”
Anna Goldsworthy’s book “Piano Lessons” is a great book about what a brilliant teacher does. A terrific teacher gives us essential knowledge which isn’t just about the subject, it’s knowledge about loving what you do with a passion, about giving yourself to it, and then finding yourself in it.
k tx bai
Mercurius @ 120, Katz @ 125:
There’s a number of things I’d like to be able to say in English but can’t (unless I use Japanese or French, my other languages)
E.g. bon apetitit or itadakimasu. There’s simply nothing we can say in English when we tuck into a good meal. I think the lack of a word for this probably reflects the historical English attitude to food.
E.g. 2 quel dommage or zannen desu ne “What a pity” just doesn’t have the same ring to it – it sounds insincere. We lack an equivalent phrase which has the intensity and sincerity of meaning.
I guess we can borrow from other languages…after all, it’s served us so well all these years.
I remember when my sister had a French exchange buddy, and Melanie asked us to teach her really COMPLICATED English words. We did so, and she said with disappointment, “But these are all French in origin. I can’t impress my teacher when I get home.” Well, yes, that’s what you get when you have a Norman French administration overlaying Anglo-Saxon peasantry.
Legal Eagle: English’s beauty is best expressed in its simple Anglo-Saxon words anyway. Look at Churchill’s speeches, or Shakespeare’s plays. The simplest Frisian words are the most powerful.
Hmmm. Not so sure, Tyro Rex. I remember reading that Shakespeare coined hundreds of words, many compound ones.
/Not within my area of expertise, though.
“I think the lack of a word for this probably reflects the historical English attitude to food.”
Agreed. Only a culture which essentially revolves around alcohol could invent the pie, or eg.
It is simply a lining for the stomach so you can go drink – like 99% of most Anglo-tucker.
I was in Palermo when Italy won the World Cup. Me and my Irish mate raved all night with 8,000 victorious Italians. Only two people were drunk.
They drove us home.
We ended up feeling a bit embarrassed, not personally, but by, and about our own culture, which we suddenly could see very clearly was absurdly piss-oriented. And we’d never really noticed either.
Latin folks dont drink to get drink, they have a wine with their meals, which are the focus.
@136 – Lefty E – I think if you look at the stats, there are some pretty big divides between Northern and Southern Europe. Danes, Germans, etc – all like getting their binge drinking on. In the Renaissance, a lot of people didn’t think anything intelligent could come out of German princely courts because everyone was permanently sozzled. I suspect if one were to be Braudelian about it, you’d find a cultural fault line just about where it stops being viable to grow grapes. It’s a wine v. beer and climate thing. There’s a lot of interesting differences in European cultures which are very long lasting and map very neatly onto various historical and ecological lines – including linguistic and religious breaks, and enduring differences in family structure.
Rousseau was onto something with his Essay on the Origins of Language, and it’s taken 250 years for most folks to realise that!
Personally from physics in the quasi-essential knowledge bucket I’d put atomic nature of matter, inertia/momentum, conservation of energy, 2nd law in the formulation ‘perpetual motion *engines* are a scam’ and from fancy modern physics I’d put in relativity of simultaneity.
In the more generous interpretation I’d put in Noethers Theroem.
My, the blogosphere on ‘How many words did Shakespeare invent/coin/borrow/inflect” is interesting, although the answer seems to be widely agreed as “no-one knows”
I forget where I read it, Martin, but I think there are a lot of words in the OED which have their first recorded usage in Shakespeare. That, of course, doesn’t prove he invented them, but as I recall, it’s likely he did a fair bit of it, as there are so many, and it’s not as though there’s a huge dearth of contemporaneous texts. I think I also remember that he used many more words than most writers before, then, or since, which I think would count against the “pithy good old Anglo-Saxon” thesis.
This book excerpt seems to be a good discussion. It seems that the English language was changing rapidly at the time with borrowings and new inflected forms and that while Shakespeare’s large and varied output was certainly remarkable, his contemporaries were doing similar things albeit less prolifically.
That’s about the strength of it, I suspect, Martin. I haven’t got up from the couch to investigate the actual bookshelves, but I’m a bit more sure now that the discussion I was recalling was in one of the linguist David Crystal’s books.
From personal experience: a second language. Legal Eagle’s comment that there are concepts that can be expressed in one language and not (or only with difficulty) in another is the significant point. Learning a second language to the point where you know in your bones that people really are different, and their view of the world is truly different from yours.
How much of what we need is simply an adequate bull detector? Enough stats to know that correlationcausation and that you cannot predict the individual from population statistics. Include reading ‘How to Lie with Statistics’.
The Truly Educated Person will end up with knowledge a mile wide and an inch deep if no care is taken. I think it’s important to know your own cultural heritage, so a knowledge of your own family history and how that fits in to your country’s history (and beyond, if relevant) is invaluable — it gives you your place in the world and a depth to your knowledge. So you need to know your country’s history, and (for Aussies) relevant bits of British history. We should know our geography, ecology and so on. Know your uniqueness, and the unique things with which your background has associated you (one reason I like to plant endemic species in my garden). Our literary heritage is largely European and Anglophone, and our music history European (and American, when it comes to jazz and pop), so I don’t think it’s a sin to have a larger focus on Europe than other continents.
From librarianship: Knowledge has different depths. Knowledge changes. Learning arises from respectful curiosity about the world. Google is not your friend, especially if you are prone to using single search terms. Google is your friend if you already know what you want to find. People tell lies on their websites. New knowledge must be integrated into schemas you already have. If it doesn’t fit, check it again. If it does fit, you will feel your world being enriched.
Lastly: Most nutters need a sympathetic attitude and whatever help you can give them, but sometimes you just need to call Security.
legal eagle at 133, there is alaso the joy of japanese honorifics, which say so much, and the subtlety of its different grades of polite language which English lacks.
Also the Japanese have imported many words, as well as making up their own (which languages like Chinese and Japanese are uniquely placed to do without relying on Greek). Arbeit, for example, they imported from German and use to describe a part-time job. Salaryman is a classic example of Japanese linguistic ability.
The idea that English has some special facility for being flexible with other peoples’ languages doesn’t really wash with me.
I think it’s really good to live in another country if you can get an opportunity. I lived in England during my teenage years, and it really affected the way I look at the world. It taught me that a lot of the things I had assumed were “set in stone” were not…a lot of stuff is actually cultural baggage. It’s made me acutely aware of that with people who come to Australia from overseas.
The other good thing about living in England was that I learned to drink ale and stout…buying into Lefty E’s point @ 136. Not sure about the food in the UK back then (apart from Yorkshire pudding, fresh picked strawberries and curries) but the beer was awesome.
That’s right mark – Ive always seen it as a Germanic v Latin thing, but that’s an interesting point re grape-growing climes, and it reminds me that you’ve recommended ROusseau on language to me before!
Perhaps it’s my recommendation for what everyone should read, Lefty E!
Thats funny – Ive just bought David Crystal on “How language works”.
I also the link the Anglo-Saxon earthiness hand is overplayed. It was actually absurdly complex, with multiple case-endings up the wazoo. One significance of the shift to middle English is the massive simplification of grammar, from the older days.
So, Angles, cheers for the vocab – but we have the Danes and Normans to thank for more sensible grammar. Curious tidbit – Scandinavian languages might sound impossible to grasp, but the word order of a sentence is pretty much the same as English. Cos thats where we got it.
David Crystal is a great writer, Lefty E!
One thing I’d like a persuasive explanation of, and maybe I should have another look at him, is the tendency for grammar to become less complex. In English, it’s normally ascribed to the effect of the Norman conquest, but I’m not sure that’s right. The further back you go, the more complex the grammar – ie Sanskrit much more so than Latin. It may well be that a lot of this structure is preserved through the written language, but no one wrote Indo-European down, and it doesn’t seem to me to be a complete explanation.
Re – Scandinavian languages, if I remember rightly, English is closest to East Frisian… it’s interesting when you’re watching Dutch movies to suddenly realise there are a few random simple sentences you can pretty much understand without the subtitles!
Absolutely Mark – barring Scots, English is held to be closest to Frisian. But the word order / sentence structure in English is indebted to the Vikings. Which is pre-Norman… though they also helped.
And check out Basque grammar, widely held to be among the most ancient of the European languages – I gather it supports your simplification over time thesis.
I didn’t know that about word order, Lefty E – thanks!
Syntax is of course the word Im looking for – English owes more to North Germanic than West Germanic in this area, despite being a West Germanic language.
Example from Wiki:
German: Ich habe noch nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen, (“I have never anything in the square seen”)
Norwegian: Jeg har likevel aldri sett noe i torget (“I have never seen anything in the square”)
Very interesting!
I’ve just pulled out David Crystal’s The Stories of English for a bit of bedtime reading!
Perhaps not different in kind, SG. However, the difference in degree is remarkable.
On the more general point, Dan Ryan’s absurd assertion that a study of Greek and Latin provides privileged insight into the nature of the English language has been trodden into the peaty mud of Northern Europe.
As far as I am concerned, the elephant in the room of our education is our culture’s extreme ignorance of the circumstances of the construction of the Bible.
Biblical scholarship is deep and profound but it is hardly reflected at all in any curricula.
@153, yes Katz a secular understanding of the production of the Bible(s) would be useful. But it’s a tough nut to crack: how do you introduce this into the publicly-funded curriculum without it becoming a perceived, or actual, vector for proselytizing (or, possibly, suppression of freedom of worship), and thus defeating the purpose?
Yes, it is the sternest test of intellectual freedom.
I don’t think it is Katz. Japan imported its script and half its words from China, combining them with a local language, it imports words from around the world to describe new phenomena, and it has s system of building blocks based on chinese, just as English has from Greek. So every word in statistics, for example, is constructed from those building blocks just as it is in English.
This isn’t unique to English, and I doubt even the difference in degree is remarkable given this. Given it happens in English and Japanese, I imagine it happens in a lot of other languages too. We aren’t special.
Also, are the circumstances of the bibles construction that relevant anymore given that most people ignore it anyway?
Yes, sg, I think they are. After all, the Bible(s) itself is full of prophets sternly admonishing their contemporaneous neighbours for ignoring the Bible(s)! Was it also irrelevant in those days, as well, simply because the Israelites routinely ignored the admonishments of their spiritual “leaders”?
Besides, whether we know it or not, whether we agree with it or not, the outgrowths and effects of Biblical morality pervade our shared political, cultural and social space. A signature example is to be found in current attitudes and legislation around marriage. There are countless others, if you care to expend a moment’s thought on the matter.
Finally, teaching *about* the Bible(s) need not (indeed, should not) equate to advocating its religious or moral positions. At least, not in the hands of an intellectually honest pedagogue who is committed to intellectual freedom…
Only half of Japanese words come from China?
According to the ever-trusty Wikipedia, directly or indirectly almost 60% of English words come from Latin and a further 5% come from Greek.
I assume that you are trying to be sensible.
Merc spells out well the reasons why an intellectually honest study of the circumstances of the construction of the Bible is perhaps more vital than ever.
@157 –
Exactly, Merc. And more pervasively than people often realise.
There’s a real sense in which we (in Australia) inhabit a secularised Protestant culture.
katz, re: the bible, I just meant that most people don’t take the religious aspect of the bible seriously anymore, being essentially irreligious, and view it as a collection of crap which we mostly ignore; and the moral imperatives therein are mostly just received wisdom now. I don’t think, for example, that most people who object to gay marriage will change their view just because of a sophisticated understanding of the mistranslations from the greek (or whatever).
I also suspect (having no sophisticated understanding of its history) that there’s no rescuing the bible – it’s largely a text full of evil and a code for discrimination, and modern “liberal” christian attempts to defend it on the basis that it was mistranslated or misunderstood are just desperate rearguard attempts to preserve the basis of their faith in the face of its obvious unsuitability to modern life. Science killed the bible, but a few people are still in mourning.
As for what percentage of a language is borrowed – every noun used in the study of statistics in Japanese is based on combinations of chinese characters. They imported their script from China. I don’t know what percentage of the language is imported in this way, but the fact that it’s not a negligible degree is more important for accepting that English is not specially flexible in this regard than is the exact percentage, imho.
None of this is relevant, of course, compared to the ability to calculate your damage on a critical hit with a battle-axe, and to tell the DM yourself that you scored the critical, rather than relying on the DM to do it for you.
That’s an incredibly sweeping – and incorrect – statement, sg.
The Gospels are full of scissions into established prejudices and lines of discrimination – against women, those who effectively worked for the Roman state (“tax collectors”), prostitutes, etc. See the parable of the Good Samaritan. They’re also in large part a denunciation of organised religious cult. Then you’ve got the constant repitition of a call for the dissolution of particularistic identities in Paul’s letters (“In Christ, there is no Greek or Jew”…) – there’s very good reason why progressive political and social movements have often taken inspiration from biblical texts over the millennia.
The Protestant Reformation, too, was the precondition for the development of the discourse of scientific rationality.
I heard (or read, or saw, sorry no source) recently that the reason English has essentially no grammar is because it’s the bastard child of Gaelic, Fresian, Saxon and Danish overlaid with Norman French, and the grammar got tossed because it made communication too difficult in those circumstances.
Given the dizzying (hey, there’s that word!) complexities of modern life, I doubt there’s one bit of knowledge that is paramount in terms of necessity; though I reckon that a knowledge/implementation of the Boy Scout Oath and the Scout Law wouldn’t be bad places to start, if you were forced to cough up *something.*
But there’s all sorts of things we can learn/know which simply make life better and saner, even if they aren’t strictly necessary.
What’s a useful thing to know? Get good at something. You don’t have to be expert, but you can attain competence and a basic familiarity with the history and methodology of doing a particular thing reasonably well. Like playing a musical instrument for instance. There’s both the intellectual process of learning the particular reasons behind why it’s done the way it’s done; the physical discipline and body/sense-memory acquired from practice and repetition, and plus the immersion in a particular musical literature, not unlike learning a foreign language and its literature. All skills and habits of mind that are highly portable into other fields of endeavor, not counting the personal satisfaction, the civilizing aspects, and the (generally not-negligible) boost to your romantic prospects.
Or another example might be chess (except that it doesn’t do too much for your sex life, and may even be detrimental to it!). You don’t have to become a grandmaster, but learning the basic theory, strategies and reasons for doing or not doing things at given phases of the game sharpens the mind wonderfully; and also learning how to both win and lose gracefully in a one-on-one encounter has its merits, especially for young people. Also it teaches future-directed thinking, procedural rule-based thinking, and empathy (if I were playing my opponent’s position, what ought I to do next?). Chess also teaches us that we live in a contingent, physical world, and are subject much of the time to its limitations — within which we can nevertheless still manage to be crafty, daring and inventive. Plus it teaches the pleasures of being sneaky, which we should not underestimate!
Also, people should learn to sing in public, even with moderate competence; it teaches both musicality and personal confidence, composure, and dignity. If you can sing a fun, amusing romp like say “Car Wash”, and also a disciplined, classical thing like an old church hymn or an opera aria (try learning say “Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schoen”. Go on, I dare ya!) out loud in public whilst maintaining a reasonable amount of dignity, then I reckon you’ve achieved something useful and important. Everybody should learn to sing their own national anthem, and a few national anthems of other countries, out loud, properly, and with a straight face. And some college fight songs, and something silly.
And if you have the time and the support system to learn even a little bit of Latin, trust me you should do it. And don’t forget to read Catullus as much or more than Virgil.
Okay then Japerz, I’ve done all that. So why aren’t I rch and famous?
Is it that I’m mostly singing Maneater?
Hmm, FDB, maybe you need to bone up on your national anthems. Have you always been loyal to the King of Spain? (my personal pick for best line evah in an anthem.)
“So why aren’t I rich and famous?”
Well perhaps you’ve neglected the bit about being sneaky, bless your heart — may the Lord reward your virtue.
Legal Eagle@144: We lived at Groote Eylandt for a number of years and had more to do with the Aboriginal community than most in our mining community including spending some time learning the basics of Enidillyagwa. A seriously foreign experience that both demonstrated how languages are formed the preoccupations of the users. For example, a very large range of words to describe blood relationships because it was these relationships that determined who you could talk to, how you could behave towards them and what obligations you had to support or share something with this person. For example, my wife observed one conflict where men were throwing spears at each other (without hitting) until some old lady who was in the right relationship to the fighting men walked into the middle of the fight and took the spears off the men. The key thing was that she was in a relationship that allowed her to, in effect, say to to both sides that they had filled their obligation to support their relatives and show sorrow for the man whose funeral they were at and the fighting could stop.
For us, it showed how little that we considered “normal” was a given for workable human societies. It also helped us sort out what we considered to be really important as distinct from unchallenged cultural baggage.
My wife’s comment after 8 years was that “I would think I knew how they worked and then something would happen and they would react in a completely unexpected way.”
An important experience that we wouldn’t have wanted to miss. Just as doing German at school in the fifties with a communist teacher who understood that opening windows was just as important as actually learning German.
Lefty E @151, I would endorse your comments about syntax being thanks to the Vikings rather than the Frisians.
I tried to learn Dutch years ago, with limited success (not a pretty language, and thus hard on motivation), but nevertheless learnt enough to understand that their grammer is quite different to English. Many words are related, but the grammer isn’t. Frisian is related to Dutch, as is Flemish.
Subsequently, I had a much more successful encounter with Norwegian, and learnt it to near fluency. The enjoyable aspect of this, is that you don’t interrupt proceedings by forcing everyone into their second language, so you can “eavesdrop” on their social interactions and feel more a part of normal activities. Better still, you can hear their sense of humour, which often doesn’t make it through the language barrier when people are using a less familiar language. Norwegians have a fine sense of the rediculous, and of tall tales, and some wonderful colloquial expressions.
Anyway, the original point before the above digression, is that Norwegian grammer looks very like English. It must come from similar origins, such as Old Norse (spoken by the Vikings). A good many words have a recognisable similarity also, so we didn’t just inherit their syntax.
Incidentally, at some relatively recent stage, a group of those pragmatic Norwegians got stuck into their irregular verb endings and “tidied-up” a lot of them. How totally sensible! Why don’t we do the same with English irregular verbs? It would save our English teachers a lot of grief, to say nothing of lightening the CPU demands on kids and foreigners who are learning our language.
More recently, I have been trying to learn Spanish, to improve the experience of holidays to South America. Lo and behold, a lot of Spanish words seem to have recognisable similarities to English words. Apparently Spanish is something like 60% from latin derivation. Better half got by in South America with comprehension of signs, menus, etc using his schoolboy latin. Meanwhile yours truely had slaved over the language books and online lessons for months in advance.
Presumably English has a large component of latin, in common with Spanish.
However, I would NOT suggest that this is a reason to learn latin. Surely, it would be more useful to learn Spanish or Italian, which are related living languages, unless you are a scholar of a particular part of European history.
I reckon Spanish is the better bet as a second language, as it is about the second most widely-spoken language in the world (after Chinese). There are many interesting countries which speak it or understand it (e.g. those that speak Portugese or a derivative). Besides, there is a lot of wonderful latino music available, which improves with the comprehension of what is being sung!
Elise: “I would NOT suggest that this is a reason to learn latin. Surely, it would be more useful to learn Spanish or Italian…”
You don’t study Latin because it’s “useful”. You do it because, like learning archery say, or falconry or letter-press printing, it’s good for the soul. (It’s also good for lots of other things, and in many ways it IS surprisingly useful, but that’s sort of a side benefit. Believe it or not, when I was in my 20s there was a time when I was able to make very good money because I knew Latin — and not as a tutor either. Strange but true.)
“Dutch… (not a pretty language, and thus hard on motivation),”
Hmm, maybe this will change your mind about its beauty. Actually I’m not sure whether she’s singing in Dutch or Flemish, but as you say, they’re related so it’s all good. (She also throws in some French and English for good measure.) One of my favorite songs lately, and plus her Sparks covers are marvelous too! Check out her “I’m Not” and her “Sherlock Holmes” at the links!
I didn’t think you were that old Japerz!
j-p-z @169, sometimes people learn things or aquire things, simply because they feel that it makes them special.
Then it becomes necessary to defend the “specialness”, with exaggerated claims of usefulness.
fur Elise.
Katz — heh heh. No no no, old chum, I’m this old. Though nowadays of course, that may as well have been ancient Rome. I’m sure you know the feeling.
Hmm, bad use of tags there, mebbe. Gracious! Perhaps I have caused confusion and delay on Sodor!
Anyway Katz, that ref wasn’t quite accurate… I just sort of liked the jobs context, more than the chronology.
Strictly speaking, I’m a little closer to this old. Not so much ancient Rome, as the sack of Rome during Pope Leo the Great. Kind of fits, too. Ugh.
‘The precondition’ is strong terminology. I’d think there was a bit of contingency in there.
Everyone should learn how their cable broadband works, (and why it doesn’t work, when it doesn’t work). For example, how to diagnose possible causes of signal loss. Here is an example: a burned out amplifier somewhere on the node, which creates voltage surges and “flaps” – interruptions to your outgoing signal to thoroughly cruel your online sessions. This recondite and jealously guarded know-how will enable you to to cut through the bullshit fed to you by Optus, and thus save you from a brain explosion after 11 sessions (avg. 50 min each) of consecutive days of discourse with Optus “customer service representatives”.
@174 – Martin, there’s a bit of contingency in everything historical, to be sure. But I was struck recently by a theologian who ran this whole thought experiment about another path to rationality without the Reformation (which he regarded as largely an unmitigated disaster), and I don’t think the Thomistic alternate universe was all that fabulous a place.
I’m sure there’s all kinds of sensible things you could say about theological discourse, social organization and the strands of instrumental thought. Language that suggests that ‘scientific rationality’ couldn’t have developed anywhere except NW Europe, and wouldn’t have developed there if not for the Reformation seems a bit much to me.
Yes, fair point. It did develop in Europe, though. Whether it could have developed elsewhere is a different question, and only answerable speculatively, in part because the Europeans pretty much ensured that it wouldn’t!
Yes, I know, generalisation and all that…
Man, my head hurts.
What does “everybody” need to know?
That you can never have too much D. !!
Oops, forgot to add, a propos of the above…
“LET YRSELF BE HEARD!!!”
Uck, sorry to be so repetitive, but while I was digging around for the earlier link above, I also found the sublime this. It’s just too good to skip. Not to be missed. You’ll thank me later, when it sticks to yr ribs…
When in doubt in life, bet on Georgie, Mike, and D.