On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 9:54 AM, Arlo Bensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [Ian] > Hi Arlo, not sure where you were coming from with the quoted sentence, > "some things are better than others", But, Yes. > > [Arlo] > The typical rant against "equalization" from a MOQ context relies on this > from ZMM, "But some things are better than others, that is, they have more > quality." My point is that many use this (or confuse this) as an attempt to > point to some deeper existential value of the person. Little Johnny's math > score is "better" than Little Joey's. We shouldn't gloss over that to make > Joey "feel good". If he gets a "D", he gets a "D". They should not both get > "A's" to satiate Joey's need to feel good about himself. Fair enough, I say, > but where from there? > > What we have gotten in this pendulum swing is a system that does not make a > profound value judgement of Joey, "he's just stupid, a dumb loser kid". What > we want is a system that asks, "why did Joey fail?" And we should have a > system that does not dismiss Joey as existentially inferior to Johnny. And > that, Ian, is where we WERE. That is the historical arc from which this > pendulum has swung. So when the talk-radio buffoons bloviate about so-and-so > ridiculous example of "equalization", I keep in mind that for every example > of THAT, there are countless Joey's who may find success in alternate > learning environments, who are not ridiculed as being "stupid", nor > dismissed by a system into a dead-end path. For every "team that is not > allowed to keep score", there are now many, many disabled kids who are given > the opportunity to excel in a system that turned a cold, blind eye to them > for so long. > > I Pirsig makes the same observation in his annotations to Copleston: "Ferrier's first move is to look for the absolute starting-point of metaphysics in a proposition which states the one invariable and essential feature in all knowledge, and which cannot be denied without contradiction. For the MOQ this is, 'Some things are better than others.'" Arlo thinks it would be better to provide "alternate learning environments" for kids who fail at school without specifying what those alternate environments might be, who would organize them and how they would paid for. I think it would be better to improve schools by introducing competition through vouchers so fewer kids would fail. But, since we've discussed ways to improve the educational system before, there's no point in arguing about it again.. But we can say without contradiction that some schools are better than others. Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
