By Noah Bergam (VI)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
George Orwell once wrote that our language \u201cbecomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wish Orwell could have seen Twitter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But look\u2013\u2013this isn\u2019t a rant about social media per se<\/em>, or even political discourse. I want to talk about \u201cslovenly\u201d language specifically as it relates to the learning experience. The word of the day is \u201cinteresting,\u201d a word used and abused so often inside the classroom that it\u2019s become a default response, an easy out to intellectually discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we want to challenge ourselves as learners, we ought to ponder: what does \u201cinteresting\u201d really mean? How long does the comment at hand capture the imagination? Does it trigger new thoughts and connections? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe you had a genuine intellectual dopamine rush. You\u2019ve dug deep, and you\u2019ve found that there\u2019s really no justification except an appreciation for the underlying beauty of a Faulkner passage or a clever computer algorithm. That\u2019s okay. To an extent, it\u2019s necessary. We all ought to stop and smell the roses every once in a while, especially in fast-paced, lecture-heavy STEM courses. But when it comes to the humanities, where student insight reigns supreme, we should be more mindful of our language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After all, we don\u2019t write book reviews in English class. We write critical essays, make evidence-based arguments in our writing\u2013\u2013and we should expect no different from our verbal discussions. The core issue with \u201cinteresting\u201d is that it effectively cuts out the need for justification, turning commentary into a passive, antiquarian pursuit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we saw earlier, Orwell voiced his concerns about the feedback loop between words and thoughts. But while Orwell speaks of language that is \u201cfoolish,\u201d I\u2019m more concerned with that which is vacuous. We have a word at our disposal that can mask critical thought and make the classroom far more comfortable than it ought to be. In the drain of hybrid learning, we have every incentive to use this word to patch up complications, misunderstandings, turning discussions into strings of weak non-sequiturs. Whether you are a teacher or a student, I implore you to be cautious. \u201cInteresting\u201d makes Zoom learning more remote than it has to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And no, \u201cfascinating\u201d is not better. Maybe we could hear \u201cscintillating\u201d a little more often, but ultimately, all these one-word substitutions reach the same dead end. There\u2019s no easy answer to the linguistic dilemma at hand. It takes a community-wide consciousness to limit our use of the i-word. If you hear it, ask for follow-up. If you use it, provide some. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keep in mind your agency over language. If you want a classroom that\u2019s more than just \u201cinteresting,\u201d it starts with you. By Noah Bergam (VI) George Orwell once wrote that our language \u201cbecomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.\u201d I wish Orwell could have seen Twitter. But look\u2013\u2013this isn\u2019t a rant about social media per se, or even political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[65,205],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-noah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3983,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions\/3983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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