Errors vs. Bugs and the End of Stupidity

[celandine13]

"A pianist has to believe in telekinesis.  You have to believe you have the power to move your fingers with your mind."

I learned that from Phil Cohn, my piano teacher's piano teacher.  Once in a while, when I was in high school, she'd arrange for me to have a master class with him.  He was a diminutive man who looked exactly like Dr. Strangelove,

Comments

[ledflyd]

you're on fire lately, in terms of insightful posts

[celandine13]

"I think there are, in fact, stupid people" -- I think, by your definition, I don't disagree. Certainly genetics and environment affect people's capabilities.

But I was actually inspired by reading activist Amanda Baggs' blog (http://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/). She's autistic and has a number of other disabilities, some cognitive. She can't speak, and she needs a lot of help for household tasks. And yet my impression from reading her was "clearly very intelligent." When she describes being unable to do something (sometimes writing is difficult) she makes it sound more like being overwhelmed by fatigue or overstimulated. And I realized: "Huh. Because she has a specific reason for why she can't do X, I don't think of it as "stupidity," I think of it as fatigue, overstimulation, etc. I only think of an incapacity as 'stupidity' if I don't know the direct cause."

[ledflyd]

thanks for the read.. fascinating stuff.

[selki]

This is a fascinating discussion, and I'd like to share it if I can figure out, are y'all using "schizophrenic" in the deprecated split personality use (now called disassociative identity disorder), or in the current psychological diagnosis sense?

[xuenay]

Would you consider making this into a public post? I'd like to share it with others.

(This is not the first time that I've had a "oh, I'd like to link to this post, but it's protected" reaction to one of your posts, BTW, though this was the first time that I asked.)

[celandine13]

Done.

If you ever find something you want to make public again, let me know.

[xuenay]

Thanks! Shared ([1], [2]).

Will do. I think the previous post where I considered asking was when you commented on Girls, but I figured that you might consider that one too personal for it.

[celandine13]

No, it's okay. Shared.

This started out as more diary-style, but I've found that my natural writing form is the essay, and I may gradually transition into public blogging again. This LJ doesn't really have a theme, but I figure as life takes shape I may develop common threads that make for writing that's suitable to share.

[arundelo]

Okay, you have inspired me to type in a favorite passage from one of my
favorite novels, Frank Conroy's Body and
Soul. I got done with it and it was so long I felt weird about leaving
it here as a comment, so I put it on my LJ.

[selki]

Oooh, thanks for that passage! Maybe I should read that book.

Here via firecat.

[packbat]

(Quick note: according to the confirmation page after my last comment, it was marked as spam - I'm guessing because of the link. Sorry about the inconvenience!)

Causality

[ext_1189533]

"Sometimes that can be a very hard and interesting problem. For example: one teacher over many years figured out that the grammar of Black English was causing her students to make conceptual errors in math.)"

Why are you blaming Black English and not the teacher's inability to learn the language of her students?

Robin

Re: Causality

[celandine13]

Her argument, not mine. I think the premise was that quantity words are used inconsistently in Black English, but I don't know if that's true.

Re: Causality

[nancylebov]

It might be more fair to say that an unexamined mismatch between black and white English was causing her students to make errors. I don't know whether any other comparable work has been done on figuring out the mismatch.

The book is Twice As Less.