Re: CHAT(?): pedagogy (was: RE: [i:]=[ij]? (was Re: Pronouncing "Boreanesia"))

On Sat, 4 Nov 2000, And Rosta wrote:

> But I view
> introductions to phonetics and phonology that make clear and
> principled distinction between them as an example of the latter
> approach.
Should "make" be "fail to make"?  If not, I don't get it.

> The apparent simplifications the blurring creates
> must inevitably lead to hopeless confusion until the pedagocial
> ill effects have been expunged. Furthermore, if you simply say
> "Last Semester you were taught that p is the case. Now forget
> that p is the case. Now learn that q, not p, is the case", the
> students get pissed off, for various more or less good reasons.
I think I appreciate your distinction, but how is the student supposed
to?

> I would add though, that, perhaps unlike Science students, the
> vast majority of the students I encounter are comfortable with
> the notion that some answers/analyses are true and some false,
> and with the notion that some answers/analyses are neither true
> nor false and only subjectively better or worse than one another,
> but they are deeply uncomfortable with the notion that some
> answers/analyses are false or of unknown truthvalue but
> nonetheless are objectively better and worse than one another.
Two wisecracks from physicists, on the the theories of their students
or junior colleagues:

        "Your theory is crazy -- but not crazy enough to be true." (Nils Bohr)

        "This isn't right .... This isn't even wrong." (Wolfgang Pauli)

> This makes it quite difficult to be upfront about the
> epistemological status of what one is teaching them.
I have trouble with the notion of "objective" vs. "subjective"
in this context, but I can't quite articulate why.  A theory
may be false but convenient -- and the convenience may be for
almost everybody, or only a few.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
        --Douglas Hofstadter