[New-Poetry] NatPoMo

[Anny Ballardini]

Jason,

I know kids are lazy. I have been teaching enough to know it very well. And 
I know that I have given a heap of private lessons to kids whose families 
have plenty of money to pay for private tuition. Those who were poorer did 
not get that kind of extra thinking especially forged for them to get them 
to university and to try to get something into their heads. I do not think 
that poorer people are more intelligent than the richer or vice-versa, but I 
do think that the richer have easier means to get to think on things if they 
want to. I also know that out of all those poor kids there are some who are 
particularly stubborn and that are  able to get through it all thanks to 
their brains and stubbornness and talent. If they are able to persist, they 
will be the ones who will shine in the future. But realistically, how many 
are they?

And as I said before, I think this discussion is diverting from the starting 
point. We are speculating on personal cases that do not reflect society as a 
whole.

From: "Jason Quackenbush" <jfq at myuw.net>
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2007 11:40 PM


>I don't think that either Amy or I are saying that there aren't people from 
>all social strata that don't care for that sort of thing. And more 
>importantly, I don't think it's even necessary for a person to be a 
>valuable and contributing member of society that they do care about 
>difficult art. What I rankle at, and I think Laura and Amy rankle at too, 
>is the idea that a person is less likely to care about intellectually 
>challenging work when they are on the lower end of the economic ladder. I 
>don't think there's any reason to hold that opinion unless you also hold 
>the opinion that difficult work is the exclusive privilege of Bataille's 
>accursed share. I don't see any reason to believe that a person's 
>socio-economic status has a great deal of sway over how they spend their 
>leisure time, and saying otherwise gets my back up a bit because it strikes 
>me as reinforcing cultural stereotypes of the poor as a great unwashed mass 
>who are too tired, uneducated, and stupid to have a vivid intellectual 
>life. I'm no sociologist, but i feel compelled to say that in my empirical 
>experience of society, that stereotype has no foundation in reality.
>