Re: NYTimes.com Article: Indian Languages: Tending the Flame

[Selma Singer]

Title: Re: NYTimes.com Article: Indian Languages: Tending the

From: Brian McAndrews To: Selma Singer Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 1:04 PM Subject: Re: NYTimes.com Article: Indian Languages: Tending the Flame At 5:43 PM -0500 11/18/02, Selma Singer wrote:  Wittgenstein had a great deal to say about getting out of that box. > > Selma > Hi Selma, Wittgenstein's entire adult life was spent doing just as you suggest above. The analogy he often used was: To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle' (Philosophical Investigations # 309) ? Amazing how concepts in-form us eh?   A similar idea is that the fish doesn't know it lives in water because it cannot conceive of "non-water".   When I was teaching sociology, I used examples very similar to those you included in your post, Brad, to impress upon my students the degree to which language shapes human life. (I was rather shocked when I read a post on this list suggesting that language did not affect culture-I hope I was misinterpreting that post).   There were many tragic examples of this during the time the Bureau of Indian Affairs was spending so much time and energy trying to force Indian children to "assimilate" into the larger "American" culture by running their schools and imposing those "American" values as a matter of course. Among the Hopi, for example, there was an attempt to teach them to play basketball and to score those games. The Hopi had no difficulty playing basketball and loved it but the attempts to teach them to score were futile; they had no concept of "winning" in the sense that we understand it and there was no way to teach it. LIkewise, when a child was singled out in class as having done a superior job on something, e.g., an essay, the child would feel humiliated because being "better" than one's peers was not understood as good; it was not valued.   When I plead for discussions about values in our society, it is often these kinds of differences in values that I have in mind. I believe we need to change our society in radical ways from its emphasis on competition, winning, performance, etc. if we are ever to have a decent society. It has to begin with childhood socialization and the educational system.   For many people, ideas such as these are unthinkable because they are unable to get out of the cultural 'box' that so limits what it is possible for them to consider.   Selma