[MD] 42

[Ron Kulp]

Thanks John,
Broken ribs make life
Difficult, coupled with
The herniated disc it
Really effects me and
My ability to think.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 14, 2014, at 2:05 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ron,
> 
> sorry to hear you're sore
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Ron Kulp <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Dave,
>> Exactly what I was aiming for, I am
>> Sincerely glad that you returned to
>> The MD. Yourself and Arlo, Andre
>> Too, have communicated the ideas
>> I also hold but unfortunately I am
>> Unable to express them with the level
>> Of proficiency that you gentlemen have displayed at the moment.
>> Having sustained a few painful
>> Injuries it has really limited my ability
>> To contribute the way I would like.
>> 
>> Thank you
>> 
>> Ron
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Jan 14, 2014, at 11:08 AM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Just some relevant quotes on the topic.... Obedient mules or free and
>> creative persons.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Now, at last, the standard rhetoric texts came into their own. The
>> principles expounded in them were no longer rules to rebel against, not
>> Ultimates in themselves, but just techniques, gimmicks, for producing what
>> really counted and stood independently of the techniques... Quality.
>>> 
>>> ...The whole Quality concept was beautiful. It worked. It was that
>> mysterious, individual, internal goal of each creative person, on the
>> blackboard at last."
>>> 
>>> In other words, rules are tools, they're not supposed to constrain you.
>> And they don't really make any sense until you have something to say first.
>> When you have a purpose, when you have your own internal goal then the
>> rules become a helpful guide, a helpful aid, then they make sense.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> At first the classes were excited by this exercise, but as time went on
>> they became bored. What he meant by Quality was obvious. They obviously
>> knew what it was too, and so they lost interest in listening. Their
>> question now was 'All right, we know what Quality is. How do we get
>> it?'Now, at last, the standard rhetoric texts came into their own. The
>> principles expounded in them were no longer rules to rebel against, not
>> Ultimates in themselves, but just techniques, gimmicks, for producing what
>> really counted and stood independently of the techniques... Quality. What
>> had started out as a heresy from traditional rhetoric turned into a
>> beautiful introduction to it.He singled out aspects of Quality such as
>> unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow,
>> suspense, [brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on]; kept each
>> of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the
>> same class reading techniques. He showed how the asp
>> ec
>>> t of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be
>> improved with a technique called an outline. The authority of an argument
>> could be jacked up with a technique called footnotes, which gives
>> authoritative reference. Outlines and footnotes are standard things taught
>> in all freshman composition classes, but now as devices for improving
>> Quality they had a purpose.Now that was over with. By reversing a basic
>> rule that all things which are to be taught must first be defined, he had
>> found a way out of all this. He was pointing to no principle, no rule of
>> good writing, no theory but he was pointing to something, nevertheless,
>> that was very real, whose reality they couldn't deny. The vacuum that had
>> been created by the withholding of grades (another experiment he created)
>> was suddenly filled with the positive goal of Quality, and the whole thing
>> fit together. Students, astonished, came by his office and said, "I used to
>> just hate English. Now I spend more time
>> 
>>> on it than anything else." Not just one or two. Many. The whole Quality
>> concept was beautiful. It worked. It was that mysterious, individual,
>> internal goal of each creative person, on the blackboard at last."In other
>> words, rules are tools, they're not supposed to constrain you. And they
>> don't really make any sense until you have something to say first. When you
>> have a purpose, when you have your own internal goal then the rules become
>> a helpful guide, a helpful aid, then they make sense. The students
>> discovered this on their own. Well, not completely on their own. But he
>> began to wonder why it worked. And he soon realised that this was no small
>> gimmick.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The students biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built
>> into him by years of carrot-and -whip grading, a mule mentality which said,
>> "If you don't whip me, I won't work." He didn't get whipped. He didn't
>> work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained
>> to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him.
>>> 
>>> This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of
>> civilization, "the system", is pulled by mules. ...The purpose of
>> abolishing grades and degrees is not to punish mules or to get rid of them
>> but to provide an environment in which that mule can turn into a free man.
>>> 
>>> The hypothetical student, still a mule, would drift around for a while.
>> He would get another kind of education quite as valuable as the one hed
>> abandoned, in what used to be called the "school of hard knocks." Instead
>> of wasting money and time as a high-status mule, he would now have to get a
>> job as a low-status mule, maybe as a mechanic. Actually his real status
>> would go up. He would be making a contribution for a change. Maybe thats
>> what he would do for the rest of his life. Maybe hed found his level. But
>> dont count on it.
>>> 
>>> In time six months; five years, perhaps a change could easily begin to
>> take place. He would become less and less satisfied with a kind of dumb,
>> day-to-day shopwork. His creative intelligence, stifled by too much theory
>> and too many grades in college, would now become re-awakened by the boredom
>> of the shop. Thousands of hours of frustrating mechanical problems would
>> have made him more interested in machine design. He would like to design
>> machinery himself. He'd think he could do a better job. He would try
>> modifying a few engines, meet with success, look for more success, but feel
>> blocked because he didn't have the theoretical information, he'd now find a
>> brand of theoretical information which he'd have a lot of respect for,
>> namely, mechanical engineering.
>>> 
>>> So he would come back to our degreeless and gradeless school, but with a
>> difference. Hed no longer be a grade-motivated person. He'd be a
>> knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His
>> push would come from inside. He'd be a free man. He wouldn't need a lot of
>> discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors were slacking on
>> the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd
>> be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they'd
>> better come up with it.
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