The Degradation of the Word

...He himself is the State which deprives him of freedom, because, forsooth, he is a worker and the state—the words are almost clubbed into his head by everything he reads—is a worker's state...

...His hunger is now a subjective illusion...

...But the spectacle ef the head of a largo American news service seriously considering the claim of a Russian propaganda sheet thst Rossis enjoys s free press, of a Town Hall audience leaving unchallenged th* plea by a professional propagandiat that Russia ia entitled to a third ef Poland because the London Polish Government ks fascist while Russia is democratic—thia ia some evidence of how fsr the degradation ef tbe ware has gone...

...The illiterate peasant knew when he was hungry...

...Tbe history of literacy and suffrage in totalitarian countries points up the task for American educators...

...All because they maintained that a literacy which was not the gateway to intellectual sophistication, that an ability to read without a developed sense of what constitutes evidence, that a failure to distinguish between a definition and an hypothesis snd the consequent inability to apply proper criteria in considering them—softened up the minds of Americans to the onslaught of domestic and foreign propaganda...

...Friendship without generosity, justice without sympathy, strength without sensitiveness, courage without isteliigence lose their validity as desirable enda...

...By "human freedom," in this connection, we mean a state of society in which politically democratic institutions exist and in which individuals have the right and power to criticise the governing agencies...

...It is, as Plato warned, t» reiy on external symbols, not "on the internal use ef their own faculties...

...The same line of argument would "prove" that the USA snd USSR are both dictatorships...

...is the moral of Sidney Hook's article...

...It is said that some Russian peasants were so illiterate that they disbelieved the existence of remotely distant countries, and suspected that wars declared against such countries were government inventions designed to increase taxee...

...But when he counted his bruises and pains he could recognize that he had been misled...

...I am not, of course, making a plea for illiteracy...

...In a free society, where words do not come from one center and men are exposed to the clash of conflicting doctrines, it is possible for the individual to employ abstractions of high order and relate them to experience as a test...

...Teach him to read, but let him read nothing except what the dictatorship approves, give him schooling, but only according to the party-line, subject him to a sustained barrage of slogans, and io and behold...

...has gene into general circulation since bis article in the Partisan Review...

...The range of evidence was limited by the narrow horizon of the peasant's interests and feelings...

...The schools by themselves csnnot solve the problem, for at bottom it is an aspect of deeper social and political problems...

...he can be led to deny the evidencehit own senses...

...In ? totalitarian society, whoso oppression ss distinct from the tyrannies of the past requires a mass base, literacy can and has been uaed as an instrument of consolidating the pewer of the ruling minority...

...the mental enslavement ef the people, fear skepticism and shrewdness of th* illiterate Euro-peasant haa probably been exaggerated...

...1st can it ever be that <in ability to read is a positive obstacle to thinking ? To^uggest that it can and, at the same time, to admit that the ability to read is a aitural good, sounds like a paradox...

...The primary aim of all educational institutions, from the primary to the adult level, should be to develop the habita of critical thought...

...At this point perhaps the schools can attempt to implement what everybody agrees on, end then press on to the conclusions that follow from an illusion ies» method...

...Goods and values in our experience come in desters, not separately...

...The reason for this is not hard to tee...

...Intellectually, this marks our era Just as muck ss the "new failure of nerve...

...But even in a democracy, literacy is not enough for the intelligent performance of the duties of citizenship unless it ia accompanied by the critical training in the use and analysis of language which Our schools foil to give...

...The very least we csn expect from them, in a society stllf democratic, is that they recognize the problem...

...Everybody wants the schools to educate students so that they will not be ensnared by the other fellow'* illusions...

...On* of the simple yet profound truths suggested by this myth ef Platot ia the danger of mechanical literary U the life of intelligence...

...For, it still remain t #*» that where only what the government approve* eon be read, literacy i* one of the mott effective mean* ter...

...will ptothtc* forgetful nest in the minds of elgli who learn it, by causing them to neglect their __,-r— inasmuch sal, from their confidence in writing, taey will reeoUect by the external aid of foreign symbols, sad not by the internal use of their own faculties...

...Some years ago there was an outcry against the few educators who called for a vigorous program of critical analysis in our educational institutions...

...Tolstoy •a* ether novelists idealized their portraits of the peaa-** type...

...The extravagant claims far nnlveraal literacy were matched later by claims made for woman suffrage which waa to bring in the new day...

...The theme is too large to pursue here...

...And as for the boots he has—they don't really pinch, there is nothing wrong with them—it is merely that his feet are defective, and therefore not properly moulded to the perfect Ersatz-shoe the factory haa sold him...

...There is no escaping them...

...But where absolute tyrsnny is fortified by literacy, the powers of memory are gradually weakened...

...Where there is no human freedom in this minimum sense, literacy stay not be a blessing, and the fears of the Egyptian Ged, Thamus, may well be justified...

...This education reaches its triumph when the "right re-•pense," from the point of view of those'who control *e propaganda, seems to the victims of that prop-egsnda to .be an expression of their uncoerced first tatar...

...This argument would be indignantly repudiated, by those who use its analogue, were Stalin's name to bo substituted for Debs...

...It calm attention to a phenomenon which every genuine liberal, democrat and socialist confronts fa discussion with open or concealed apologists of totalitarismiem...

...There is no quick remedy for uneducsted literacy...

...The same line of argument would "prove" that since no one can be perfectly good, and since Hitler is kind to animals, there is only a mer* difference in degree of goodness between Hitler and Eugene Debs...

...The span of recall contracts and tends to coincide with the time interval between the directives issued to the press by the Propaganda» Ministry...

...That task is not only to extend literacy and suffrage but to make them more retpontibl* by raising th* quality ef education...

...Those who die-set* the percentages of increase in order to establish that they are not aa great as claimed, miss the main *·**· Grant the apologists of totalitarianism all their there is cold comfort in it...

...Moral insight consists in knowledge of the way in which goods sal valsta are related to each other...

...But by imposing literacy, they can see to it that no ona escapes their influence...

...Thinking" becomes s conditioned response to words, and "thought" is competed by providing the appropriate phrases to the open-lag cue...

...this is sometimes gingerly accepted because it removes the odium of Invidious totalitarianism from Russia...

...If the traditional peasant type was ehort on words, he was notoriously long on memories...

...They root out the very recalcitrance of silence...

...But Thaxous sternly rejects ?, ,||- "For this invention of yours," Plato makes las esy...

...It raisos once more fundamental question* about the nature and aims of education...

...Through universal literacy under a monopoly of power, words and slogans reach into the mind of every man...

...The same line of argument could "prove" Germany and the USA both democracies, differing merely in degree...

...sometimes they art obscure and aurprising...

...The unconscious processes are "educated...

...The result was that he was often fooled...

...One of the ways by which we check the worth el a good or value in a concrete aituation ia by its effects ? the family of goods and values to which tt belongs...

...He knew that the knout which lashed him was not wielded by his hand, and that it was not his will which moved the officials of the state to imprison and deport him...

...Even his superstitions testify to his "vulgar" empiricism...

...The repercussions of the discussion it provoked can bo still hoard, and the phrase, "the new fallere of nerve...

...But the kernel of truth behind the legend is *hs reliance the peasant placed upon th* deliverance of ™» own experience as evidential signs of what he was ¦J* H's data were crude, limited, but strictly verifi-¦Me...

...We predict that hi* present article en "The Degradation of the Word" will have similar effect...

...And if the secret police find it necessary to shoot him, they are merely carrying out the- sentence of his own unconscious judgment—which Rousseau and Hegel and the Commissar-Philosopher, Mltin, sll tesch...

...Sometimes the iwistienehips are obvious and open at hand...

...Whatever may be the immediate quality of a specific good or value, its validity or worth depends upon its relations to other goods and values...

...he knew when and where his boots —when he had any—pinched...

...They supply a continual and unvarying stimulus to all who cannot keep their eyes shut...

...And by monopolizing the use of words, they prevent the conflict of metaphysical systems with each, other, and the conflict between all of them and scientific philosophy, which to some extent safeguard intelligence in democratic/cultures...

...This, as we understand it...

...Those memories were difficult to talk down...

...The Degradation of the Word literacy Can Be a Weapon of Enslavement as Well as for freedom By Sidney Hook IN one of his early dialogues, The Phatdrut, Plato relate* a .harming myth about the Egyptian God, fkemm, who tat in judgment upon the creation* g Tktath, poly math and inventor of the art of writing, •ftp*** pleads fot the dissemination of letters among #1 K*TPtt*n» <"> the ground that they are a medicine aaaeaery and wisdom...

...One is tempted to describe him as living according to the faith of the \ popular semanticists who lump together sll abstractions as untrustworthy, without distinguishing between those that can lead us at some point to definite observation-tests and those that cannot...

...If the reader thinks argumenta like these are far-fetched and not representative of discussion on Russisn snd other public affaire, he has not been resding the press attentively...

...In the light ef history how naive and innocent appear those gallant sten and women waa saw in universal literary the panacea of all social sad political evils...

...I am on the side of Theuth, not of Thamus...

...Without the challenge and the stimulus pro-by Ppep criticism of word by word, to read meant tescomfre the habit of credulity...

...A *»K unfailing argument in the arsenal of defenders ef totalitarianism is the increase in literacy which has hsksn place under dictatorial rule...

...conclusion violently opposed by those who accept the sequence in the first sentence...

...As Sidney Hook points eat, w Bert there ia no human freedom, literacy functions not as an instrument of liberation bat of mental enslavement...

...All of ua know that the ,bilHy to read is not the same at the ability to think...

...He knew exactly what to expect in the hereafter...

...He wss Ignorant and could easily be misled...

...But the schools can do something—how much cannot be known until they reorganise their curriculum* on every level to educate for critical intelligence...

...TOTALITARIAN countries ere not the only breeding grounds of metaphysical syntheses which wipe out the empirical differences between things...

...Oat ef the interesting things about literacy as a tataral good—and we are beginning to see that this it true for a great many other natural goods—is that He gosdnass ia organically related to human freedom...

...Such thought is not a substitute for action but a preface and accompaniment to action...

...But such deep distrust was really a demand for evidence...

...They were taxed with being skeptics who robbed youth ef its faith, philosophical fifth-columnists who subverted the simple pieties towards God and a decent foreign policy...

...And yet we are all familiar with situations in which goods and values stem, in a manner of speaking, to turn into bads and dbvalues...

...Or consider the argument: no state is completely democratic: the USA in some respects is undemocratic: th* USSR in some respects is democratic: therefore they are both democracies, differing merely in degree...

...One of the most popular techniques of undermining free society is the degradation ot the ward...

...piet** myths an often expressions of dramatic irony wsie* suggest different meanings that are hard to rec-tacga ay those who forget the poet in the system maker, stage scholars may dispute concerning which meaning ? Plato» intended one but we may enjoy them all...

...The argument has hem made for Japan, Germany, most frequently for Btstia, and lestt frequently for Italy...

...A FEW years ago in an article entitled, "The Now Failure of Nerve," Sidney Hook opened a counter offensive tgainst the light* from resaOB which marked the American cultural scene...

...The boots he hain't got he really doesn't need, to the Emperor or the Fuhrer assure him, or they are on order when the nth ?-year plan is finished...

...But he didn't fool himself...

...But in an unfrev^ociety there is a tendency for literacy to corrupt the natural pragmatism of the human mind...