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Document Type

High School/College Connection in I.E.

Abstract

One of the problems for the twentieth century mind, asserts Walter J. Ong in his text. Some Proligemina for Cultural and Religious History. is that it has devalued orality and become a prisoner of the culture in which the twenti­eth-century mind has tried to mature. "Contemporary man," states Ong, "finds it exceedingly difficult and, in many instances, quite impossible, to sense what the spoken word actually is. He feels it is a modification of something which ought to be written" (19). Not only does contemporary man find print alien from the idiolect of homo dicens. but also he finds the substance of most print totally meretricious. Addressing this issue, Bruno Bettelheim, renowned child psychologist, observes that there are many in our culture who devalue literacy, for the skill has brought them little satisfaction. Subsequently, many ignore literary texts because the texts add nothing of importance to their lives ( 4 ). Ignoring texts, unfortunately, separates the skilled literate from literature's myth-making energies which, next to the family, are the most important con­duit for transmitting cultural heritage (Bettelhejm 4 ). Furthermore, in refusing to explore literature for its cultural value, the ill-functioning literate becomes the paradigm of Allan Bloom's closed-minded American. Bloom, who asserted in his work, The Closing of the American Mind, that a "value is only a value if it is life enhancing" (201), believes that the University has abandoned its role in transmitting values with the practical effect that all the vulgarities of the world outside the University now flourish within it (337). In sum, this exordiurn identifies three areas where high school and college individual events programs can collaborate: I) stressing the primacy of orality over print; 2) identifying meaningful literature; and, 3) knowledging students in the values of their race, culture, and milieu.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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