Though I’ve read and watched several Shakespearean plays, Julius Cesar was not one of them. This was an interesting exercise in reading and then listening to a performance.
For whatever reason, while reading the section, I contrasted it with Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Here Anthony was initially utilizing reverse psychology and/or being contrarian (Brutus is an honourable man, I won’t read the will, etc.) which can be compared to Swift’s piece of satire. Though very different literary devices/methods, Anthony’s rhetoric and the satire in A Modest Proposal intends to provide the opposite effect than what the words on the pages actually state.
Questions to Consider
- What effects has writing had on human thought processes?
Most of the readings, and especially Ong, suggest that switching from predominantly oral to predominantly writing has allowed for more complex thoughts (especially around space time). Writing also ease the dissemination of knowledge; rather than constantly relying on skilled experts to provide answers and or having knowledge being passed down from expert to apprentice, writing allows one to “look something up,” to obtain knowledge individually.
- Does it weaken memory? If so, does this matter?
It’s difficult to provide a 100% certain answer to this question, as as per this section it’s difficult to get accurate measures of a pre-writing society. With globalization and modernization, many oral cultures (such as the indigenous peoples) have incorporated writing. Even those who are illiterate still demonstrate advanced notions of space and time that is attributed to a society adapting the practice of writing.
That said, logically, the process of writing should weaken memory. To provide a personal example, prior to cellular phones, I memorized the phone numbers of close friends and family (and many of those numbers are still in my head right now despite them moving out and/or receiving new phone numbers), potentially through constant repetition/muscle memorial of dialing the number. (side note here, I believe the etymology for “dialing a number” refers to a rotary phone, which I have used in early childhood but did not use by the time I moved to Canada). Fast forward to today where the act of dialing a phone number is to search for a contact in my phone’s address book. The number of people whose phone numbers I know by heart has decreased drastically (although one may argue this is also due to me not calling people as often).
On the other hand, one could also argue that an oral society doesn’t necessarily have a perfect memory either. As one of the readings put it (I believe Ong), oral stories told by two different people won’t be exact copies of each other, similar to a game of telephone.
- Is rote learning of any use in literate cultures with easy and affordable access to various methods of information storage? (i.e., Is there any pedagogical merit in requiring students to memorize information such as mathematical formulas or literary texts?)
This question came up previously in another MET class, and I’ll take a stance that seems to be against the grain of progressive educators. While the BC Ministry of Education is shifting away from standardized exams and rote memorization, and even at the post-secondary level we have discussed professors who allow students access to the internet during final exams, believing in the power of “ungoogleable questions,” I’ll still contend that there’s still a purpose for rote memorization, for two main reasons.
There are some facts that one should know by heart. For instance, at the start of the school year students in science and shop classes have to pass a safety test that requires students to memorize various safety procedures before they can perform experiments or use machinery. Sure, students can look up how long they should use an eyewash station for, but in an actual emergency, every moment matters, and recalling information will be faster than looking something up (even with the aid of Siri).
The other main reason is that memorization of the facts allow us to question various things we look up. According to a recent study (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3613904.3642596), when given programming questions ChatGPT contains inaccurate information 52% of the time, and 39% of the time users overlook the inaccurate information. Though memorization, through knowledge of performing operations that machines can do far faster, we can identify times when machine outputs end up being wrong.
- What form(s) of thinking has writing facilitated? In what ways has this been beneficial or detrimental for humanity?
While the readings mentions advancements in thoughts about space and time, I’m largely unconvinced. I think back to the Kuuk Thaayorre mentioned in Boroditsky, who have better perceptions of space (at least, cardinal directions) than users of written languages. Yet, if I were to accept these readings at face value, then I would argue that this is mostly for the benefit of humanity, as it allows for us to further contemplate the nature of the universe and the various laws and mechanisms in place. That said, I understand my answer to this question is largely influenced by me recently teaching the cosmology unit in Science 10, and I’ve been primed to discuss humanity’s understanding of space-time and how that has affected our knowledge of the universe.
- How has the technology of writing changed the act of teaching?
I’ll bring up Ong’s point about apprenticeship again, and my own point about the dissemination of knowledge. Prior to writing, teaching requires the presence of an expert, and learning is an apprenticeship of seeing how the expert acts. With writing, the presence of an expert isn’t entirely necessary, and while this allows for independent learning, it could also lead to misinterpretation of the written text, and no expert around to correct these alternative conceptions.
Student centered learning wouldn’t be possible without writing; sage on stage and orality seems to go hand in hand, and without writing, how is a student suppose to learn individually, without going to a sage for answers?