(This started as a comment and then got quite long, so I moved it to the main page)
I really am fascinated with, and have spent a lot of time ruminating upon, the arguments against written language contained in Plato's Phaedo. Part of this is because I studied a great deal of Plato in my undergrad, and was always fascinated by the idea that so much of what I was gleaning from that material was never intended for the record.
When Plato recorded (or created, depending on your view) the Socratic dialogs, he was primarily recording a method of teaching and learning that was not especially popular (the Apology is evidence enough of that). The Socratic method as we know it consists of group learning in a question-and-answer sort of environment. It is not front-led, in that each member of the group is encouraged to contribute both in the asking and the answering, but is certainly guided. The Platonic/Socratic argument against written knowledge is that it precludes this kind of inquiry. The written word, Plato's Socrates surmises, says the same thing to everyone. In that sense, then, it is dangerous, because one person may read a text in a way that encourages positive action and another may read it in an opposite way.
(Edited to add: After a comment, I noticed that this paragraph seemed somewhat contradictory. What I mean, and what comes from reading the Phaedo, is that Socrates' opinion is that while a text literally says the same thing to everyone, it cannot defend itself against misinterpretation. I hope that clears up my somewhat overtired musings.)
I wonder, as we move away from book-based learning and communication of ideas, what new sorts of teaching and learning will be created, and what old forms may be revived. In the world of blogging we already see much greater room for discourse within texts, with comments and message boards present on almost any blog and even many news sources. In things like Wikis, too, we see this ever-presented adaptability of text and information, and the arguments both for and against such flexibility. Even the medium in which our class is presented is one that is completely new, allowing for distance learning that also exists in a group setting.
With this constant flow of conversation, the originals are always adapting, both with the direct additions from the comments and the potential additions and modifications by the author as new ideas, questions, and information are presented by the readers.
What has been called the information age is, for our purposes, a new environment for learning, and I think it will be fascinating to see how the teaching professions and the lives of students evolve over the next ten or twenty years.
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Could you clarify this line for me:
ReplyDelete"The written word, Plato's Socrates surmises, says the same thing to everyone. In that sense, then, it is dangerous, because one person may read a text in a way that encourages positive action and another may read it in an opposite way. This is a fairly valid supposition, in my mind, and an interesting one in considerations of print literacy."
Sure. If you consider the way Socrates was teaching, it was really based around conversations with other people but also with information--was it valid, did it apply everywhere, when didn't it apply, how could things be changed to make a piece of information better applicable, and so on. So for Socrates, a piece of information that had been written wasn't open to this kind of discourse. You couldn't argue with a text, because a text can only say what it has already said.
ReplyDeleteThe way this was exemplified for me was with Machiavelli's Prince. Plenty of people read that as a justification for violence (better to be feared than loved), which may or may not have been his intent, but because it is recorded for posterity, people can take his words and twist them (or just misunderstand). It also happens with religious texts, and so on. By recording them and considering those recordings definitive, we lose, in a way, the ability or perhaps the desire to debate with the information they contain.
So when we talk about the value of written word in record keeping, for example, or memory keeping, do we consider this facet?
Hope that helps.
I read what I wrote again, now, and I think what I explained was not the question you asked. What I meant in that line was to explain that text says the same thing to everybody but cannot defend itself to anyone's interpretation. I came off as contradictory and I didn't mean to be.
ReplyDeleteOkay, thanks. I was confused when you said it said the same thing to everyone but that it meant different things to different people; saying that the text can't defend/explain itself in the face of confusion (because it is static) helps me understand what you meant!
ReplyDeleteI think modern authors often try to leave things open to interpretation because they want to encourage that discourse, though, so just because the text doesn't change doesn't mean our understanding of it is uniform. I think the proliferation of literary analyses makes that clear.
While new digital media (e.g. blogging), seem to offer a way to provide the opportunity for dialogue and clarification diminished by the shift from an oral culture to a print culture (via comments, replies to comments, etc.), I would argue that the speed of communication that seems inherent to digital media also leads to more instances of miscommunication and misintepretation than traditional print media sometimes created.
ReplyDeleteThink about the difference between letter writing and email. I remember the wisdom back in the day was that when you wanted to write someone an angry letter, you should write it all down, but then wait a day before you sent it. The result, of course, was supposed to be that in a day you would simmer down, have vented your frustration, and would think better of actually sending the letter. The email writer, however, just has to click send. Something in the process of putting pen to paper, choosing your words, folding up the letter, sealing the envelope, addressing it, putting it in the mailbox, etc. -- all these steps were reminders of the permanence of what you were creating. I would argue that these reminders of permanence engendered more thoughtful, more careful, more reflective writing, writing that was less likely to be misinterpreted than something hastily typed. You couldn't accidentally send your letter to everyone in your address book ("reply all"), and the nuances of writing like "tone" were usually clearer (many of my students -- and some adults -- don't understand that all caps can seem like shouting, or that you shouldn't say things in email any differently from how you would say them to someone's face, that bluntness sounds rude in any medium). So, while we can easily reply back and forth to emails, and comment on blogs, maybe we wouldn't need so much commenting and clarifying if we had the time to think about what we were writing in the first place.
I think about this often during class as well. The LEEP model is wonderful in many ways, but I often feel rushed in the text chat and in small group "discussion" in a way that I never feel in classes I take live and in person. There may be more opportunity to participate, but is quality sacrificed in the place of quantity?
The speed of communication brought to us in the digital world certainly has made life better in many ways (for business, for keeping in touch with loved ones, for access to news, etc.). But I do wonder if, in all these areas, the slower pace and understanding of permanence that can come with traditional print media actually encouraged us to be more thoughtful.
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ReplyDeleteJust for the record, I always sent my angry letters. E-mail has just increased the speed of the angry reply. ;)
ReplyDeleteThey were actually talking about letter-writing on NPR the other day (yep I am one of those people), in reference to a book called "Yours Ever" (which just came in through ILL for me, hooray). Anyway: one of the things the author pointed out was that you lose a lot in the transition from handwritten letters to typed letters or e-mails. For example, in a series letters from a parent to a child, you see the handwriting changing or deteriorating with age. You have fingerprints and crumbs and water stains and postage stamps, all of which give the reader context for the words in the letter. I still have a (physical) folder of sappy terrible poems a boy wrote for me on college-ruled looseleaf in high school, and kids born just a few years after me will never have that. Somehow a saved Microsoft Word document doesn't have the same nostalgic appeal. Saving actual letters sounds very romantic and far away now.