Great Essay Ray!!!
It is so true - how "linear" the west is in deciding what is best for everyone else. JC had it right, look in the mirror and take the plank out of your eye (stupid) and you might learn something. Excuse the vulgar paraphrase but sometimes you have to be brutal to get noticed.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
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From: "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Brian McAndrews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Karen Watters Cole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Futurework] working with learning disabilities
Date: Fri, Oct 3, 2003, 2:51 PM
As an artist I find the same thing true of cultures. Some cultures are better mechanical technologists while others are better at spiritual sophistication while others have spent their time with agricultural technology. Some are better bankers while others are better teachers. Each group has an environmental element as well as a historical and linguistic one.
For example when the Jewish poet Jerome Rothenberg examined the poetry of indigenous peoples of America, Asia, Australia and Africa he found a relationship to rhythm and time that he termed spiritual. A use of language that included silence as well as sound as an element of meaning. His term for these groups after a long study was Technologists of the Sacred since he found the Middle Eastern groups to be less sophisticated in their use of such spiritual concepts although more sophisticated in the use of actual language symbols. The indigenous groups were often resistant to acceptance of the Western mechanical economic technology as being profane. In the book "Culture Matters" several economists spoke almost genocidally in the need to destroy indigenous spiritual technology in favor of the advancement of Western technological economic attitudes.
IQ tests also measure the linguistic elements that favor the Western technologies. A more holistic test such as the work of Edward T. Hall and his proximics research showed a distinct advantage in the opposite direction in relation to non literary social skills. His book the "Dance of Life" documented the problems with visual observation of "sync" gestures incorporated in the Western literary model. His Western observers were at a distinct disadvantage to the Hispanic, Black and Indians who also analyzed the film subjects. Their learning was as difficult for them as Western IQ issues are in reverse. I experience these issues on a regular basis in the teaching of voice to students from every cultural mileau. Such issues become delineated very quickly since voice is holistic and involves _expression_ of the whole person through the psychophysical sculpting of sound in time.
That is why I call IQ a cultural value rather than a human one. Western medicine and science has its limitations just as the other cultural views do. We are all in possession of fragments based upon where we stand and observe in the circle of humanity. In the past, Europeans moved about the world and wrote some of the best books that opened their philosophy to outside ideas. Today we are so close to each other that the translators, like travelers in the Orient from the past, are running into the actual people themselves. That calls for another level of consciousness and cultural intelligence based upon actual living experience with other groups and the development of a mutual respect.
Our physically challenged citizens are but a projection of our uncomfortableness with differences outside our cultural world views. It is, unfortunately, not humbling that the Eugenicists would have gotten rid of people like Stephen Hawking. Nor that the lack of an acceptance of each individual's right to follow their own path (based upon the fact of their own existence) is based on the lack of a willingness for us to accept ourselves. And an unwillingness to accept the reason for our existence as growing right up to the moment of our death. If life is about doing something for something, other then growing, up to the moment of our passing, then growing seems a waste, unless you think in a different manner. It is that different type of thought that I find most wanting in the West and the most depressing element about living here. But that is my lesson for my growth and learning. The answer is now and has always been music. Music gives it all meaning for me.
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian McAndrews <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Karen Watters Cole <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 11:06 AM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] working with learning disabilities
At 9:24 AM -0700 10/2/03, Karen Watters Cole wrote:
I'm guessing that Brian has some current and relevant information/experience on the subject. Anyone?
Hi Karen,
I'm not comfortable with the term 'learning disability'. I much prefer 'learning difference'. I also don't like the negative connotation that 'slow learner' implies. Ed's initial posting on this topic included a list of prominent people past and present. Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were labelled as 'slow learners'. Perhaps 'careful learners' or 'inquisitive learners' or 'marching to a different drum learners' or 'outside the box learners'is more accurate.
We should always remember the tortoise and the hare fable.
Take care,
Brian
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* Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator *
* Faculty of Education, Queen's University *
* Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 *
* FAX:(613) 533-6596 Phone (613) 533-6000x74937*
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* "Education is not the filling of a pail, *
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