Re: Oddities

On 4/9/2025 11:56 AM, Zen Cycle wrote:

On 4/9/2025 12:02 PM, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/9/2025 10:31 AM, cyclintom wrote:

One of the things that has really puzzled me is the reaction of Liebermann and Flunky to my simoply saying that I read out aoll of the nun-fiction books in three libraries.
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What in heavens name would be unusual or unlikely about that?
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While listening to Victor David Hansen Hoover Fellow at Stanford, said the reason. While he was teaching literacy, he started out with assigning 6 books starting with the Iliad and the Odyssy to his student and was by the late 60's forced to reduce this to 2.
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Much to his surprise rather than reading at the normal 180 words per minute, students were struggling with 40 or 50 wpm and they couldn't understand half of the words expected of a high school student, let alone a college student.
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Suddenly that rang a bell: the reason that Flunky and Liebermann and to a lesser extend Krygowski found this unbelievable is because they are nearly illiterate. They simply cannot believe that someone would voluntarily read, when it is so difficult for them. We did not see this sort of disbelief from John or Andrew. We are of an age that we were expected to be able to read. While they may not be as highly read on every subject, every few days, Andrew or John will post something referring to books that the other three either have never heard of or only heard the title in passing. In our day MOST high school students were assigned the Iliad and/or The Odyssy.
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While it is true that I didn't read more current books such as those aqssigned in writing or literacy coures, that was because it was entirely outside of my areas of interest. Liebermann at least has the excuse that English is his second language. But what excuse other than illiteracy would Flunky have? Or while misspelling when you have trouble seeing the screen means that my touch typing is shitty, why would spelling be so important to Frank if he didn't have such a microscopic vocabular?
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Shadow found no trouble with my reading, because he is himselk well read in Spanish. Roger well read in English. Rolf in German. these people did not comment on myh reading volume. While it may not have been what they might do, they did not find it unusual.
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The reason for this is tha American Teacher's Union. When questioned, my wife who herself taught reading and writing admitted that there had been a large drop in the literacy of teachers with the recognition of the Teacher's Union. During the pandemic, in THREE weeks, she taught her grandsons reading well enough to go from 2 years behind their grade level to 2 years ahead. That doesn't say a lot for people in Teacher's Unions.

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Mr Hansen was a professor of Classics at Stanford, not a remedial reading teacher.
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 I made the assumption that it was a typical tommy fuck-up - he actually meant "literature", not "literacy".
 That said, Andrew, I'm struggling to remember the last time you did this:
"every few days, Andrew or John will post something referring to books that the other three either have never heard of"
 John recently posted references to Alice in Wonderland and Tom Sawyer - hardly qualifies as "never heard of or only heard the title in passing"
 Care to refresh my memory?
 

US Constitution maybe? Hardly anyone has read that.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971