<http://canonical.org/~kragen/blosxom.cgi/2003/01/02#Oneoftheworldsbesthackerscommentsoncreativewritingandprogramming>
Hackblog provided a link to RPG slides containing quotes from Richard Hugo's _The Triggering Town_. A few reactions: > You are trying to find and develop a way of writing that will be > yours and will ... generate things to say. Your triggering subjects > are those that ignite your need for words. More generally, one tries to find and develop a way of living that will be one's own and will generate things to think about and do. One's triggering subjects are those that ignite one's desire for contemplation and action. Tiger got to hunt Bird got to fly Man got to sit and wonder: why why why? * > For around 400 years [creative writing] was a requirement of every > student's education. If our standards have lowered in recent times, it may be because for around 400 years we didn't bother with educating nearly all of the population. Some argue that although we mean well, and have swelled the school rolls, we still don't manage to educate most of the population. For instance, Dorothy Sayers postulates in "The Lost Tools of Learning" that a trivial education would be better than a modern one: > When we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men > went up to university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter > were held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their > own affairs, are we altogether comfortable about that artificial > prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years > of physical maturity which is so marked in our own day? To postpone the > acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it a number > of psychological complications which, while they may interest the > psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to > society. The stock argument in favor of postponing the school-leaving > age and prolonging the period of education generally is there there > is now so much more to learn than there was in the Middle Ages. This > is partly true, but not wholly. The modern boy and girl are certainly > taught more subjects--but does that always mean that they actually > know more? > ... > Properly taught, I believe that [the Trivium] should be [sufficient > education for life]. At the end of the Dialectic, the children > will probably seem to be far behind their coevals brought up on > old-fashioned "modern" methods, so far as detailed knowledge of > specific subjects is concerned. But after the age of 14 they should > be able to overhaul the others hand over fist. Indeed, I am not at > all sure that a pupil thoroughly proficient in the Trivium would not > be fit to proceed immediately to the university at the age of 16, > thus proving himself the equal of his mediaeval counterpart, whose > precocity astonished us at the beginning of this discussion. > ... > What use is it to pile task on task and prolong the days of labor, > if at the close the chief object is left unattained? It is not the > fault of the teachers--they work only too hard already. The combined > folly of a civilization that has forgotten its own roots is forcing > them to shore up the tottering weight of an educational structure > that is built upon sand. They are doing for their pupils the work > which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of > education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; > and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain. -Dave * or at least, "from whom did I steal this verse?"
