Re: Gary Richmond
At: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13861
Gary,
A good place to track the state of public education in the United State, with occasional reflections
on and from the global scene, is Diane Ravitch's blog.
☞ http://dianeravitch.net/
It is at times a depressing picture to see what regressive forces are doing to downgrade teachers
and destroy universal free public education as we used to know it, but it is at other times just as
inspiring to see how many bright people are leading the good fight to prevent that from happening.
Regards,
Jon
Gary Richmond wrote:
List,
Although I agree that creativity cannot be taught/learned, it *can* be and,
in my opinion not infrequently, is stifled, thwarted, stunted. near
smothered, derailed, and finally self-inhibited. It can also be fostered,
nourished, and encouraged.
A simple example: For a large number years I taught and coached music at
every level from middle- to graduate school and during that time I heard
many a tale of a child who was told (sometimes by a parent, sometimes by a
sibling, even by a music teacher!) that she "couldn't sing," and that one
comment stifled even the desire to sing, sometimes for decades (I should
add that most of these folks had lovely voices once they were "released").
Many of them 'found' their voices in the course of working with me.
I also worked for several years as a music therapist to explore how the
active exploration of music could strengthen and encourage people in
sometimes profound ways, especially when they discovered they could
actually do creative things with it.
On a somewhat related note, while at the Peirce Congress this July I had a
conversation over lunch one afternoon with Eliseo Fernandez (Ben recently
placed all his papers on Arisbe, btw, everyone worth reading, imo) where we
agreed, and along Peircean principles, that an aesthetic education--even
the simplest, rather, most natural kind relating to appreciation of
nature--provides a sort of foundation, or at least, support for an ethical
education. However, many children are deprived of that crucial aesthetic
education and, in our considered opinion, lose an important part--the
'feeling' part--of their ethical education, indeed their fullest education
as human beings.
Well, this is all a bit off the Subject of this thread, so I'll leave it at
that, especially as the Stjernfelt seminar has begun and I'd like to
concentrate on that.
Best,
Gary
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690*
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:
That's an interesting comment, Gary R - but I don't agree. I don't think
that creativity is something that can or must be taught. I think that we
humans are naturally curious, exploratory and thus, creative. You can watch
any young child at play to see this, as they put together strange sandpile
shapes or figure out how to manipulate a parent to get that extra sweet.
I don't think that destruction is the default position - which it would be
if you assume that creativity only exists IF it is taught. I think that
destruction emerges out of psychological angst and anger - and - it is not
in itself always 'taught', i.e., the result of childhood abuse. I think
that sociopathic behaviour can be innate.
As for doing nothing - I don't consider it destructive or leading to
decline. Releasing oneself from the bondage of action in a retreat is not
a destructive action in many ideologies, eg, Buddhist, Christian retreat.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Gary Richmond <[email protected]>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]>
*Cc:* Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> ; Peirce List 1
<[email protected]>
*Sent:* Monday, September 01, 2014 6:57 PM
*Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Q. Why is there so much falsity in the world?
Edwina, Jon, list,
A friend of mine, a Peirce scholar not currently in this forum, just
happened to include this comment in a personal note. I thought it had some
relevance.
To the extent that humans are not taught to be creative, they will be
destructive (even if only by default; even doing nothing is destructive, or
leads to decline).
Best,
Gary
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690 <718%20482-5690>*
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:00 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]>
wrote:
You are playing games with us, Jon! You haven't said WHY you consider
that people 'prefer falsity to truth, illusion to reality'.
And I don't agree with your conclusion, for it carries within it an
assumption that truth and reality are unpleasant. Are they?
What about - the fact (truth, reality) that our species has the greatest
capacity of all living organisms to 'imagine' the world. That capacity for
imagination enables man to invent - something that animals, for the most
part, have little capacity to do. Rather than waiting for evolution to
develop wings, man imagines flying and invents the airplane. And email
and....
And in his capacity for invention, man must deal with truth and reality.
Or, the plane won't fly and the computer won't exist or work.
So, aren't we a combination of both? And thus, don't we require both?
Edwina
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Awbrey" <[email protected]>
To: "Peirce List 1" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2014 3:50 PM
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Q. Why is there so much falsity in the world?
A. Because people prefer falsity to truth, illusion to reality.
⁂
Being the drift of my reflections on the plays I saw at Stratford this
summer —
King Lear, King John, Man of La Mancha, Alice Through the Looking-Glass,
Crazy for You, Hay Fever.
⁂
The Beaux’ Stratagem • Masks, Madness, & Shakespeare's Sonnets • Anthony
and Cleopatra
⁂
http://web.archive.org/web/20140730150000/http://www.
stratfordfestival.ca/mobile/plays.aspx?id=63
http://web.archive.org/web/20140901185642/http://www.
stratfordfestival.ca/forum/showcases.aspx?id=20472
⁂
The obligatory report on What I Did This Summer,
but not unrelated to pressing problems of logic.
Cheers,
Jon
--
academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
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