[New-Poetry] NatPoMo

[Anny Ballardini]

I am therefore insulted by my own words. If this is the message you get, 
then let's leave it like that. It is past midnight here, I cannot repeat 
further what I am not able to explain. good night Jason.

From: "Jason Quackenbush" <jfq at myuw.net>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 12:15 AM


> I've been a private tutor myself, and i know just how worthless those 
> private lessons can be for a kid, who will never the less go to a good 
> school, get a good job, and make a lot of money and their entire life will 
> still be dead to a life of the mind. just look at the current us president 
> for a paradigm case.
>
> Moreover, i don't think that it's strictly a function of formal education 
> that leads to an interest in art. i'm not just talking about the one's who 
> will shine in the future, but of the ones for whom reading difficult books 
> is a welcome and enjoyable pastime. A lot of those people will live and 
> die poor and no one will ever hear about them, and realistically, there 
> are a lot of people like that. a lot. Are the exceptional? yes. But that 
> doesn't make them the rare exceptions among the rabble that you and James 
> seem to want to paint them as. My point is that there are a lot more than 
> you're giving credit for, and that it's not going against type to be a 
> broke intellectual. I'm basing that on my personal experience of living 
> and working with the people you and James are insulting. And i'm basing 
> the fact that it's insulting on the fact that I am one of those people, 
> and i feel insulted by this position that you have both taken.
>
> Anny Ballardini wrote:
>> 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.
>>>
>>
>>