Bulletin #714
Subject: BEYOND WORDS.
18 September 2016
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
I recently read a short and charming
book aimed at public school teachers in the mid-1960’s, called Reading and Thinking (1967). It was a
collective work, edited by Maurice Eash of Hunter
College, and it included essays by four other teachers covering the pedagogy in
a variety of curriculums. The idea was to superimpose the separate elements of
cognitive science on public school curriculum to indicate the best ways in
which students might be taught to think.
The schema for cognitive abilities
was outlined in the first chapter by Eash with what
he defined as major and subordinate categories: 1) Understanding, i.e. decoding what the author meant without
projecting one’s own opinions.(Central to such apprehension would be ‘command
of the language and knowledge of vocabulary.’) 2) Utilizing, by which he meant learning to abstract the main
principles or ideas in a text and apply them to different situations. (Here
students would learn to differentiate facts from generalizations and identify
those facts which support certain generalizations). 3) Discriminating, the author tells us, is a cognitive ability
which is essential in learning to master and manipulate written materials without
being overwhelmed by detail. This skill was subdivided into five subordinate
categories of activity : a) detecting facts used to develop a
generalization; b) differentiating between different types of statements;
c) classifying different types of facts or
statements; d) relating different types of facts and generalizations to
others; and e) seeing organization in the way material has been
presented. The next major category of cognitive ability is 4) Chaining, which
is the cognitive ability of relating ideas to other ideas. It involves extrapolation,
the logical extension of an argument or description which is based on known
data (as for example, calculating the circumference of the earth when you know
the earth spins on its axis at a speed of 1000 miles an hour and that a day is
24 hours long), and interpolation, which is an insertion of something
new but nevertheless consistent with the original text (like, for example, a
missing step in the written directions on how to assemble a bookcase). And
finally 5) Judging, which involves making decisions and choices and which
represents the over-all ability to follow the procedures of a) searching for internal
consistencies and contradictions, and b) using external standards to
make comparisons with information from other sources.
This tidy little package of ideas
and categories was then systematically applied by classroom teachers to various
trade books related to their disciplines in language, literature, social science, natural
science, and mathematics.
Reading and Thinking, using supplementary books in the classroom, by Maurice Eash, is a vintage production of the 1960’s, out of which came both radicals socialists and neo-liberals. What cognitive dissonance produced this mix? An insight into the present state of intellectual paralysis is offered in the writings of NYU Professor Bertell Ollman on Dialectical Materialism, as a method of social research. (See, also, my 2007 essay, "Learning, Learning to Learn and the Democratic Matrix".)
Battus mais non vaincus
The 8 items below might offer
perceptive readers a glimpse into the progression from
whence we are derived; a vision of the destination towards which we are heading; and --if the current situation is not so
disruptive of cognitive thought as to have intellectually and spiritually
blinded us to our present realities-- a recognition of what we have now become.
Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
Professor emeritus of
American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
Director of Research
University of
Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced
Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The University of
California-San Diego
a.
Native American Activist Winona LaDuke
at Standing Rock: It's Time to Move On from Fossil Fuels
http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2016/9/12?autostart=true
===========
b.
Lakota Activist Debra White Plume from Pine Ridge: Why I am
a Water Protector at Standing Rock
http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2016/9/12?autostart=true
===========
c.
Oliver Stone and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
on Edward Snowden, the Movie
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/14/oliver_stone_joseph_gordon_levitt_on
===========
d.
The Untold
Story of 9/11: Bailing Out Alan Greenspan’s Legacy
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/09/the-untold-story-of-911-bailing-out-alan-greenspans-legacy/
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
===========
e.
Israel Wins in November
http://www.unz.com/article/israel-wins-in-november/
It doesn't matter who is elected
by Philip Giraldi
===========
f.
False Flag Terror “Has Succeeded
For Millennia, To Compel War”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/09/false-flags-3.html
by WashingtonsBlog
===========
f.
Cameron ‘Ultimately Responsible’ for Libya Collapse
and Rise of Isis: Commons Report
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/libya-david-cameron-isis-islamic-state-ultimately-responsible-for-leading-to-collapse-and-rise-of-a7251331.html
The scathing verdict comes just one day
after Mr Cameron’s sudden announcement that he will
leave Westminster immediately
by Rob Merrick Deputy Political Editor
===========
g.
THE LARGEST PRISON STRIKE IN U.S.
HISTORY ENTERS ITS SECOND WEEK
HTTPS://THEINTERCEPT.COM/2016/09/16/THE-LARGEST-PRISON-STRIKE-IN-U-S-HISTORY-ENTERS-ITS-SECOND-WEEK/
===========
h.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
To: newsfromunderground
Sent: Saturday, 17
September, 2016
Subject: [MCM] Something's very wrong with "our free press," when only
32% of us believe it tells the truth !
If you like this piece by the astute and
fearless Paul Craig Roberts, please consider
helping him with a donation.
MCM
Western Media Credibility In Free Fall Collapse
Dear Readers:
This website is
trusted by more people worldwide than trust the Washington Post, New York
Times, CNN, Fox News, BBC or any Western print and TV source. My columns are
reproduced on many websites in many languages. My combined readership is many
times that of the New York Times. My books are translated into Russian,
Chinese, Czech, Korean, German, French, Turkish, and Spanish.
Despite the vast
readership, this website is supported by a small percentage of committed
readers.
If money would flow
into where only truth is spoken, more could be done.
No foundations
support this site. Any foundation that supported this site would be dropped
from the New York and Washington dinner party list, as I have been.
This site has no
advertisements despite its readership rank that would bring in advertisers.
This is because I know that once the site is supported by advertisers, reader support
would decline, and the advertisers would control the site. The money would be
used to subvert my independence, and since that cannot be done, the site would
cease and my voice would be silenced.
If people will not
support truth, they do not deserve truth, and they will not have it.
Western Media Credibility In Free Fall Collapse
Paul Craig Roberts
The latest from the Gallup Poll is that only 32% of Americans
trust the print and TV media to tell the truth. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx
Republicans, 18 to 49 year old Americans, and independents trust the media even
less, with trust rates of 14%, 26%, and 30%.
The only group that can produce a majority that still trusts the
media are Democrats with a 51% trust rate in print and TV reporting. The next
highest trust rate is Americans over 50 years of age with a trust rate of 38
percent.
The conclusion is
that old people who are Democrats are the only remaining group that barely
trusts the media. This mistaken trust is due to their enculturation. For older
Democrats belief in government takes the place of Republican belief in
evangelical Christianity. Older Democrats are firm believers that it was
government under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that saved
America from the Great Depression. As the print and TV media in the 21st
century are firmly aligned with the government, the trust in government spills
over into trust of the media that is serving the government. As the generation of Democrats enculturated with
this mythology die off, Democratic trust rates will plummet toward
Republican levels.
It is not difficult
to see why trust in the media has collapsed. The corrupt Clinton regime, which
we might be on the verge of repeating, allowed a somewhat diverse and
independent media to be 90% acquired by six mega-corporations. The result was
the disappearance of independence in reporting and opinion.
The constraints that
corporate ownership and drive for profits put on journalistic freedom and
resources reduced reporting to regurgitations of government and corporate press
releases, always the cheapest and uncontroversial way to report.
With journalistic
families driven out of journalism by estate taxes, the few remaining newspapers
become acquisitions like a trophy wife or a collector Ferrari. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of amazon.com,
handed over $250 million in cash for the Washington Post. Jeff might be a whiz
in e-commerce, but when it comes to journalism he could just as well be named
Jeff Bozo.
On September 12, Washington Post reporter Cindy Boren dropped the
Washington Post below the level of the supermarket tabloid, National Enquirer.
One must wonder where her editor was. Drunk perhaps? The Washington Post
actually reported that a Nigerian MD, Bennet Omalu, “whose credentials and tenacity are well known,” has
concluded that Hillary Clinton’s obvious medical problems could be due to her
being poisoned by a Putin-Trump conspiracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/09/12/the-man-who-discovered-cte-thinks-hillary-clinton-may-have-been-poisoned/
One could possibly
conclude that Cindy Boren and her Washington Post editor were having fun with Omalu, except that the article repeated the unfounded
allegation that circumstantial evidence according to a UK inquiry associates
Putin with the poisoning death of Litvinenko.
In
other words, first Litvinenko, now Hillary.
If circumstantial
evidence is to be the Washington Post’s guide, then clearly that evidence
suggests that the neoconservatives, well-ensconced in high government positions
and desperate for a New Pearl Harbor in order to launch their wars of hegemony
in the Middle East, are responsible for 9/11.
Yet the Washington Post has a full-time reporter whose job is to
disparage conspiracy theories while the Washington Post itself launches the
conspiracy theory of the century: Putin
And Trump Conspiracy Poisons US Democratic Candidate for President. http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/09/15/washington-post-grasps-crazy-conspiracy-theory-support-hillary-clinton.html
If intelligence, or
perhaps simply sufficient time in Americans’ lives to investigate the news,
were not in such short supply, possibly Americans would reflect on what the
benefit is of being driven by Washington into conflict with Russia and China.
It most certainly
will not be victory in war, as we all will be dead.