NewView Options

#9 Antidote to the Myanmar Syndrome

Visualize a wall of water 350 feet high, light green, frothing at the top, speeding right at you. That’s what struck on December 26, 2004, when a series of deadly tsunamis hit Southeast Asia, killing 225,000 people in eleven countries.

But one nation of people in the direct path of the tsunamis weren’t harmed at all, not even their children or their little babies. A nation of boatpeople just off Southern Myanmar (Burma), a people called the Moken or the Sea Gypsies, knew a tsunami was coming, even before scientists and their techy instruments knew it. The Sea Gypsies on land headed to higher ground, while those at sea headed to deeper waters. All the Sea Gypsies survived, both on land and at sea.

Yet many experienced Myanmar fishermen were at sea, too, and they all died, as well as many of them on land. Why? A Sea Gypsy was asked that question, and he sagely replied,

• “They were looking at squid. They were not looking at anything.
  They saw nothing, they looked at nothing. They don’t know how to look.”

The main point was that the Myanmar were looking only at parts of their whole environment and thereby missed something vital to their survival. And they paid with their lives for their inadequate habits of thinking.

The Sea Gypsies realized that the Myanmar were not looking at large patterns, that the Myanmar did not see important processes, that they were not looking with any particular purpose, and that they didn’t know how to look in a way of seeing the big perspective of their changing environment.

What a subtly implied, perfect pattern for seeing the problems and understanding the solutions for just about anything, even writing (with a few small insertions, here):

• “They were looking at parts. They were not looking at patterns.
  They saw nothing of processes, they looked at nothing with the right purpose. They don’t know how to look in perspective.”

Like the fabled six blind men—each trying to understand what an elephant is by feeling only one part of the elephant—and like the Myanmar, instructors of writing have traditionally emphasized only one part or another in isolation instead of seeing the whole picture of how all the parts work together under a simple First Principle.

Elusive though it has been, there is such a simple First Principle, and I call it NewView.

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#8 Practical Rules for Writing NewView Essays

One kind of writing being taught all over the country is the essay. I acquainted you with the father of the modern essay, Michele de Montaigne, in my post, The Five NewView Options — a la francaise. And I shared Wayne Booth’s unanswered, frustrated lament with you, “. . . where are the practical rules . . . ?”

In the 1970’s, Sheridan Baker used a form he called The Keyhole to teach how to write essays. I’ve taken that keyhole form and I’ve done several Additions plus Reorganizations and Substitutions to make The NewView Keyhole Outline, shown just to the right, here (about 100 years ago, many keyholes had this outline –trust me on this). I’ll explain it to you, and you’ll be able to use it as a set of “practical rules” to help organize your essays.

Like many writing instructors, Baker didn’t give a compelling reason for beginning the introductory paragraph with a generalization, but here’s the NewView rationale— Read the rest »

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#7 Writing’s Simple First Principle — NewView

Throughout the ages of Western Civilization, many philosophers and scholars have been dissatisfied with the theory and practice of teaching rhetoric and composition, including Plato, Aristotle, Peter Ramus, Francis Bacon, Francois Fenelon, and Herbert Spencer.

As expressed in the second paragraph of his essay, The Philosophy of Style (1852), Herbert Spencer (a 19th Century English philosopher) felt that the problems of composition and rhetoric were due to there being no fundamental first principle:

The maxims contained in works on composition and rhetoric are presented in an unorganized form. Standing as isolated dogmas–as empirical generalizations, they are neither so clearly apprehended, nor so much respected, as they would be were they deduced from some simple first principle . . . . And we may be sure that recognition of the general principle from which the rules of composition result, will not only bring them home to us with greater force, but will disclose other rules of like origin. Read the rest »

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#6 Crisis in Writing, Says National Commission

According to the National Commission on Writing, there’s a crisis and a need for a “revolution” in teaching writing in America—only 24% of high school seniors can write Proficiently or better. That’s less than 1 in 4. Wow.

With so many 12th graders unable to write, the National Commission has issued a challenge to government, education, and business leaders to combat the problem.

But is anybody looking for new solutions? Heck, No.

The Commission recommends just throwing more money, more time, more teachers, and more of the same old thing at the continuing problem. In fact, the Commission has published 5 separate, detailed reports that all recommend the very same thing.

Actually, the current “crisis” is only the latest in a series of “crises” (click the preceding link; then note the sixth entry, by writing authority Robert Connors: “Crisis and Panacea in Composition Studies: A History,” which is an outstanding review of such ‘crises’ in the Twentieth Century) that have been going on since before Aristotle. Why? Read the rest »

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#5 Why Teachers COULDN’T Tell You THE Secret of Writing

As I asked at the end of my last blog: “So why isn’t the crucial OldView-NewView concept being taught in schools?”

Because —
1. some long-dead, widely accepted philosophical authority didn’t invent it
2. the creativity of the OldView-Newview relationship contradicts established Western thought about writing and rhetoric, as exemplified by Aristotle, supposedly the great master of writing and rhetoric

#1–About two years ago, as I was pursuing an M.A. in Special Education, I remember reading in one of the official textbooks a statement by a professional educator that was very close to this: “As time has proven, over and over, you simply can’t change the education system from the inside. From the outside, only the source of money—the state or the federal government—can change the system.” Read the rest »

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