{"id":49,"date":"2011-10-24T17:30:48","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T16:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.wpcoder.com\/dan\/wordpress\/?p=45"},"modified":"2014-05-07T18:17:01","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T17:17:01","slug":"la-candida-letra-impresa-y-su-olvido-de-lo-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/revista\/la-candida-letra-impresa-y-su-olvido-de-lo-normal","title":{"rendered":"O, YEE PROUD PRINTED LETTER…!, or How we have come to forget the worth and value of orality and \u201cnormality\u201d in the last 100 years."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>19 Minute, 42 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

.<\/p>\n

An incredible but true story…<\/strong><\/p>\n

– I –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I once was told that many years ago, the Mexican Ministry of Education undertook an important mission: That of measuring the I.Q. (Intellectual Quotient) of our indigenous peoples, in order to adequate our school system\u2019s curricula and conditions to their real needs.\u00a0 A large number of teachers, psychologists and pedagogues armed themselves with batteries of written tests, and set themselves to the task.
\nThe results, however, couldn\u2019t have been more disheartening: Most communities sampled \u2013according to the experts, scored so low, that we should consider our \u201cMexican Indians\u201d to be intellectually disabled…!
\nThe project and its results were quickly silenced and buried. No-one dared to publish its \u201cdiscoveries\u201d, yet no-one could tell what had gone wrong, either.
\nThe Mexican Revolutionary government had justified many of its most unpopular measures, claiming to work for the betterment and empowerment of these ethnic groups that “officially” constituted the quint-essence of the Mexican identity\u00a0 \u2013a task the Revolution had undertaken to justify itself before its enemies.\u00a0 In this context, any information that might discredit our indigenous groups, could have been used as a weapon against the Revolutionary party, and be interpreted as a national shame…<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We now know that the results were wrong;<\/em> and that our army of “experts” had made a list of very basic mistakes:
\nFirst: The tests were in Spanish \u2013a language most of our Indians couldn\u2019t understand at that time.
\nSecond: Written tests are not adequate for use with persons who were mostly illiterate…
\nAnd third: Most examinees couldn\u2019t reply to the tests, …because they didn\u2019t know how to write at all, either…<\/p>\n

Not only this: Even if the tests had been applied orally and in every examinee\u2019s mother-language, they could only uncover and measure intellectual abilities that are the result of a literate school system \u2013like the one that has been prevalent in the Western World since the end of the Medieval Ages, and which frequently does not reflect those valued and developed in an oral community.
\nThe results –therefore, wouldn’t have differed a lot, to the ones obtained, and would have proven equally flawed:<\/em>\u00a0 There are many other useful types of intelligence that we, humans, can develop, and which our current school system doesn\u2019t take into account.
\nA few anecdotes will help us understand what this means.<\/p>\n

– II –<\/strong><\/p>\n

a)
\nDifferent scientific studies have discovered that illiterate people process information in a different way, when compared to those of us\u00a0 who have spent years in a schoolroom, re-shaping our minds according to a set of given goals.\u00a0 As a result of this, \u201coral\u201d (not literate) people never talk about \u201cinformation\u201d (an abstract and cold concept); they prefer to talk about knowledge, and admire wisdom, not plain intelligence.
\nThe last truly illiterate peasants in Russia (those who didn\u2019t even know printed letters existed), had no idea about what a \u201cdefinition\u201d was; and neither could they understand what it was good for.
\nWhen asked about what a tree is, for example, they would take the examiner to one, so that he\/she would see the tree with their own eyes.\u00a0 And \u2013guess what!, they actually thought the examiner had asked …because he\/she didn’t know what a tree was!\u00a0 It was plain clear for the illiterate person, that the other one was quite ignorant.<\/p>\n

When a geometrical shape was shown to these last truly-and-entirely-illiterate peasants (let us say: a circle), and they were questioned in regards to what it was, they never answered \u201ca circle\u201d \u2013abstract shape concepts were not useful for their everyday life.\u00a0 Their preferred answers might be:\u00a0 \u201ca pot\u201d, \u201ca full moon\u201d, or \u201cmy mother\u2019s face when she is happy\u201d, because their culture taught them to prefer objects or beings that were relevant for their survival.\u00a0 In other words: These answers seemed more intelligent replies to them, than the \u201cround thing or object\u201d we would have used.<\/p>\n

b)
\nThe oral community sees the knowledge it has gathered, as its greatest wealth; and considers it a key-tool to its survival as a group at the precise location they inhabit.\u00a0 When you lack printed letters to store it outside of you, however, you need to find alternative means to retain it. The danger of losing it for ever, is real and present.
\nBecause of this, the oral community produces proverbs, sentences and sayings that encapsulate it in a way that is easy to remember; and applauds those who learn them by heart.
\nNot every piece of knowledge they have gathered can be encapsulated this same way, however. Because of this, the oral community also creates tales and stories (schematic\/formulaic narratives) that tie that information about life to a given context, so that through associating ideas, we\u2019ll be able to remember it whenever it may come useful.
\nThis means that hard-to-remember ambiguous characters in a story, don\u2019t serve them for much; they prefer clearly sketched and easy to recall characters, so that the knowledge about life that has been encoded into them \u2013that they embody,\u00a0 will be easily retrieved when needed.\u00a0 This way, what the community has learnt after many generations of trials and errors, will be joyfully learnt \u2013and not forgotten, by most of its members.
\nIn an oral community context, repetition is key to their culture\u2019s survival, because otherwise they would soon forget all these sayings and tales.\u00a0 This accounts to their appreciation of formulaic structures and strategies for story-telling, like the use of archetypes, stereotypes and topics\u00a0 that they value above non-formulaic ones.<\/p>\n

c)<\/p>\n

It is self-evident for persons in an oral culture, that we cannot see every existing being and thing. The word<\/strong> \u2013talking, is the foundation of their culture, and yet they cannot see it.\u00a0 Unlike written words, spoken words are essentially mysterious, and to a certain extent, magical: They \u201cchange hearts\u201d and \u201cmake things happen\u201d.\u00a0 For a person in an oral culture, talking is an important event, something truly special, and not an object \u2013not a quantifiable and manipulative piece of information.\u00a0 Generally speaking, that is why their minds are more open to what is not material, than ours.
\nThis also accounts for the importance of the \u201cother person\u201d to them: You talk to someone, not to the air; whereas what you write may never be read at all \u2013a text may never \u201ctalk to anybody\u201d, if no-one ever reads it.<\/p>\n

Something more: In an oral culture, a story usually reflects what the common consensus is about life, in regards to certain issues.\u00a0 A text, however, usually tells what its author wanted to say, which may agree or not with what the community-to-which-its-author-belonged, believes \u2013in general terms, though, as exceptions frequently abound.
\nFurthermore: Reading in our days, is something we usually do alone, in silence \u2013it isolates uf from our community, and therefore promotes individualism.<\/p>\n

Writing allows us to bring knowledge out of a person, and to objectify it (…it becomes \u201ca text\u201d).\u00a0 Evidently, this also depersonalizes it, and greatly reduces its symbolical weight \u2013usually related to the community\u2019s relationship with both its divinity and nature.
\nIt naturally follows that those narrative resources that oral communities have embedded and applauded in stories, in order to promote homoeostasis (a natural tendency to balance and survival in living beings and the live-systems they structure, like societies), become less relevant\u00a0 the more literate\u00a0 a society grows to be \u2013at least in the Western World.<\/p>\n

The main one of these narrative resources, is the \u201chappy ending\u201d, in which every character receives the prize or punishment he\/she deserved, according to its society\u2019s experience about life, and view of the world; and which many highly educated persons have become absurdly biased against.<\/p>\n

d)
\nOral cultures privilege what has been learnt aurally (through listening to narratives, sayings, the elderly, what others say…), or through experience (working, interacting, etc.).
\nThose of us who have learnt to read and write, however, tend to privilege what we learn through our eyes \u2013in the sense of: from information repositories that are accessed through our eyes,<\/em>\u00a0 as opposed to watching a tree and ruminating by ourselves what trees in general may be.
\nThis explains why we tend to believe most of what we read in printed letters, as if uttered by a divine mouth; and to measure a country\u2019s progress mainly through their literacy levels.<\/p>\n

Walter Ong \u2013the more cited expert in regards to the differences between orality and writing (and the frames of mind they both produce), showed how the popularization of literacy and printed works, and the generalization of school systems based upon them, has allowed modern science to develop \u2013yes; but has also enabled the development of a rampant Individualism and a reductionist Materialism, than in their most extreme examples are destroying the Western world. The printed letter has reduced many learnt people\u2019s appreciation for what is symbolic, immaterial and collective, for example…<\/p>\n

e)
\nWhat surprises me the most, is the habitual\u00a0 over-valuation of what is rational over what is emotional (affective), that we frequently experience as a side-effect of literacy \u2013and its inefficient reaction against: Romanticism (inefficient because it doesn\u2019t recuperate other important traits frequently lost through contact with literacy in our days, like the impulse for truth, beauty and good, that protects us from the opposite excess: That of over-valuating affection, too).
\nIn the old days, societies appreciated those who could \u201cmeasure someone up accurately\u201d on the spot \u2013who \u201ccould tell someone\u2019s heart\u201d even if appearances played against him or her;\u00a0 and turned to those people for advice and example.
\nWho ever asked a boy who wanted to work as a gardener, for papers, for example?\u00a0 They would talk with him, observe him carefully, and make a frequently accurate decision regarding his elegibility for the job or not…
\nIn the Medieval Ages, this ability was called \u201cdiscretion\u201d, and was considered a \u201cpotency\u201d (a power, ability, or competency) of our heart \u2013not of our mind, which was better fit for phylosophical and mathematical endevours.\u00a0 This was the origin of expressions like: \u201cuse your discretion\u201d, \u201cleft to your medical doctor\u2019s discretion\u201d, \u201cat someone\u2019s discretion\u201d, \u201cdiscretion is the better part of valour\u201d, \u201cdiscretionary actions\u201d or \u201cact upon discretion\u201d.
\nDiscretion is a heart-based intelligence, that makes use not only of “information”, but of “wisdom”: What we have learnt through experience, and also through our intuition.\u00a0 Yet, who amongst us today, would dare to hire someone, or to trust someone, without first requesting a number of papers…?<\/p>\n

– III –<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Why talk about this…?<\/p>\n

Because we certainly owe much to the printed letter, which we must treasure and strive not to lose.<\/em>
\nBut neither must we allow it\u00a0 to make us forget other equally important certainties \u2013like those that refer to the worth of dialogue, of affection, of everything that helps us weigh and appreciate the \u201cother person\u201d, that helps us ponder at the collective dimension of our lives (family, community…), and which allows us to make positive sense of immaterial issues and beings, to name a few:\u00a0 \u201cOut of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh…\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prejudices linked to the printed letter have made it very difficult for many of us to understand and appreciate artistic and literary works created by illiterate peoples, for example.\u00a0 And has also prevented many learnt people from appreciating many worthy works transmitted by mass media in the last half century (popular works).\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These prejudices have also condemned to isolation, defunctionalization and progressive hunger, many \u201celite\u201d (\u201chigh brow\u201d) writers, researchers and thinkers; …and many popular (and commercial) ones, too, through biasing their judgments and aesthetics, and stopping them from creating\/studying\/broadcasting the type of works our societies needed.<\/p>\n

It is important to analyse these issues, also, so that we can take a learnt stance at the political agendas that are dealing with the rights and duties of indigenous peoples \u2013of their traditions and customs, in our societies.<\/p>\n

All of us \u2013both literate and illiterate, majoritarian and minoritarian groups, must strive to understand one another, and to respect and appreciate\u00a0 one another\u00a0 the way we are \u2013we need to invest time and effort into understanding what makes us different, what has made each of us process information and make decisions in different ways, and live differently, too,\u00a0\u00a0 in order to find true solutions to the difficulties inevitably brought by our co-existence in any given land.<\/p>\n

Yet those who make decisions must be very careful not to impose to a “third party” \u2013to society at large…, the political agendas and personal ambitions of each faction\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n

Illiterate minorities certainly deserve respect \u2013and must get it, but formulas must be found that do not trample upon majoritarian values, ideas and beliefs, either.\u00a0 If respect is not reciprocal, it simply doesn\u2019t exist…<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Sources of this article:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Walter Ong, Oralidad y escritura: Tecnolog\u00edas de la palabra<\/em> (Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 1987) [Spanish version of Orality and literacy, interfaces of the word<\/em>], and [Petrus] Ramus, method and the decay of dialogue: From the art of discourse to the art of reason<\/em> (Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 1958).<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This picture illustrated a previous version of tis article, that was published by El Rotativo<\/em> –Univ. de San Pablo-CEU’s academic newspaper, Spain.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like any other schooling system, Modern formal education in the Western world, tends to reproduce in students a certain mindset -a certain frame of mind, therefore privileging a particular type of intelligence –the literate one in this case, over others.
\nWe must not forget that this type of intelligence is not the only one humans can access, however: There are other intellectual abilites which it is also worthwhile to acquire, like those an oral culture appreciates, and which are innate to our species.<\/p>\n

If we keep basic concept like this is mind, we will be able to make more accurate assumptions about reality, thus improving the quality of the decisions we make, the worth of our opinions, and their impact in the world.<\/p>\n

This article mentions one clear example: How the differences between the oral and the literate mindsets, and their intrinsic biases, reduce the possibility of reaching a durable and fair solution for conflicts as serious as the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, thus gravely affecting the life of a whole nation. The paradigm shift is another example.
\n__
\nThis is a short version for the general audience, of a very long specialized article that the Revista Digital Universitaria de la UNAM, published in 2002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153,692,16],"tags":[69,58,64,50,83,76,84,80,28,26,59,27,81,86,733,82],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-utiless-para-todos","category-utiles-para","category-revista","tag-agendas-politicas-economicas-e-ideologicas","tag-alfabetizacion","tag-aprendizaje-y-desarrollo-de-habilidades-de-lecto-escritura","tag-autoregulacion-simbiotica-de-la-convivencia","tag-chiapas","tag-contenidos","tag-el-mundo-indigena-en-mexico","tag-estudios-culturales","tag-influenciaefecto-de-los-medios","tag-interculturalidad","tag-la-lectura-en-el-mundo-actual","tag-mediacion-cultural","tag-medios-y-temas-sociales","tag-paradigmas-de-mentalidad-la-oralidad-la-escritura-y-lo-digital-y-las-distintas-ideologias-y-sistemas-de-creencias","tag-revista","tag-temas-de-actualidad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":74,"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3103,"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/3103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediosmejoresqueganenmas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}