What are Words Worth? (Tag Pt 3)

By Duane Sharrock

When it comes to focusing on student development in the sciences, technologies, engineering, and mathematics fields, thought leaders and educators get STEM wrong. They promote the sciences but only the physical sciences. They promote math (or the maths) but rarely support specific applications of math. They promote engineering in terms of maker spaces and design thinking, but they skip right over the T of Technology. Except for the use of Internet Computer Technology, their discussions about technology focus on technical vocational training in “tech centers.” Not on what technology fields are and what kinds of learning should be included.

In fact, they exclude what should be included.

They are right to explore technology in terms of use and repair and services. They aren’t wrong, technically. The problem though is that educators dismiss the academic subjects in schools as though they are wastes of time, condescendingly categorized as self-betterment, self-improvement, or acculturation. By categorizing English, Social Studies, the Arts, and many other related subjects as “the humanities”, they marginalize the most accessible technological learning we have in schools, because “the humanities” are actually various applications of language technologies.

Think about it. In any “tech” program, you learn how to use various kinds of tools in order to fix or to build. Some tools are useful in different programs; some tools are specifically designed for specific purposes. For example, a screwdriver can be used in a small engines class, in the carpentry class, in the auto repair class, as well as in the training to become an electrician. There are also tools that make certain jobs easier, like tweezers used in computer repair and upgrading but probably won’t be of much use in a small engines class, in the carpentry class, in the auto repair class, but maybe in the training to become an electrician.

If there is one thing you learn in a tech program though is that although you can learn how to use some basic common tools to do your job, nothing beats using a specialized tool designed to make doing a certain job easier. So, if you know what a (nonmusical) mandolin is and how to use one in a kitchen, you can achieve some edible textures and flavors from very fine slicing that you could not achieve with even the sharpest of knives.

To avoid getting too general, let’s focus on one “trade”  as an example of a trade or “tech” program. The culinary arts is probably the best choice because most people learn how to cook.

What Happens in the Kitchen…

According to the Wikipedia entry on “Culinary Arts”, “Culinary arts, in which culinary means "related to cooking", are the arts of preparation, cooking and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as restaurants – are commonly called "chefs" or "cooks", although, at its most general, the terms "culinary artist" and "culinarian" are also used. Table manners ("the table arts") are sometimes referred to as a culinary art.

“Expert Culinarians are required to have knowledge of food science, nutrition and diet and are responsible for preparing meals that are as pleasing to the eye as well as to the palate. After restaurants, their primary places of work include delicatessens and relatively large institutions such as hotels and hospitals.”

High school students can learn how to use knives effectively. They can learn how to use other cooking tools like the wire whisk, a blender, measuring spoons, pots and pans. Although they can learn how to use more sophisticated tools like the mortar and pestle, the microplane, and the salt pig (to name a few), students can also learn how to use and to clean more familiar items, like the cutting board, the spatula, tongs, and pans.

Students also learn cooking terms. Beyond terms like boiling, baking, and frying, there are many other terms to learn. There are ways to season and marinate food before you cook them just as there are sauces and gravies, frostings and powerderings, there are ways to pair and present food after the cooking.

Yes, flavor preferences and conventions depend on the regions and cuisine. The levels of sweetness, saltiness, spiciness, and other tastes and textural qualities differ.

These are technical terms and techniques though.

Terms and techniques are not things. They are words for procedures and processes. Technology isn’t all about tools and physical objects, it is also about how to use those objects in terms of timing and under certain conditions. The coordination of preparing amounts of food and seasoning using various tools and techniques is described in a recipe to create a certain product that you hope will meet your expectations. Again, you have something in mind. The recipe is the narrative of how you realize this goal.

The Tom Tom Club “Wordy Rappinghood”

STEM promoters might argue that language is not based on physics or physical properties the way Internet-Computer-Technologies (ICTs) are. They may even list the math involved, the electricity and the parts that depend on electromagnetic phenomena --like lasers-- as proof that ICTs are more technological than language. To them and that argument, I would list the ICT technician jobs, like the diagnosticians in hospitals, the administrative assistants, secretaries, photo editors, photographers, web designers, medical billing specialists, and others. Then I would point out how successes in those jobs do not rely on knowing the sciences or maths that make their machines work and that few--if any--could build the machines, component by component, that they depend on to do their jobs.

Sure, some training programs summarize some of the ideas that make the work possible but knowing about the technology is not the same as knowing how the science and math come together in the technology to make the “magic” happen. I’ve seen a few textbooks that give a cursory introduction to the science, technology. I’ve never seen math even mentioned.

This is understandable. Educators are often pressed to justify how certain courses are useful for certain jobs and careers but they are shooting too high or in the wrong direction. Instead, we should find other ways to “sell” the importance of learning how to read and think. Some school programs shoot for the acquisition of knowledge like the International Baccalaureate program (IB) in that it focuses on Theory of Knowledge, introducing the different kinds of knowledge, helps students think about how people know what they know, how to choose what kinds of evidence to support the building of different kinds of knowledge.

If there is one thing about public education we need to encourage is that there are different ways of thinking. While developing a better understanding of Theory of Knowledge, as you learn to value evidence in different ways and learn how to support claims and reasoning in different ways, our thinking becomes more targeted depending on goals and effective thinking for resolving different kinds of problems and challenges.

Theory of Knowledge also suggests that how we read is also going to be different depending on the academic discipline the text belongs to.

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What is Disciplinary Literacy? Here is a general answer: “disciplinary literacy is defined as the confluence of content knowledge, experiences, and skills merged with the ability to read, write, listen, speak, think critically and perform in a way that is meaningful within the context of a given field.”

Now, for all of this exploration of teaching and learning, it could seem that my argument is getting lost in the ideas about knowledge and knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition. Instead, though, think back to the discussion of tech programs. What do you learn in a particular tech program? You learn about tools, how to use those tools.

If you are learning repair services, you are taught how parts come together. You might not learn how to build some of the parts, but you do learn how to replace them or tune them so that the machine works properly. If you are learning cosmetology, you learn how different tools and chemicals can be used to enhance beauty. The culinary arts, as mentioned before, goes into preparing, serving, and presenting food.

The thing about cooking is that it is also like language. Depending on how we grow up, we will assume that the ways we season and cook food are the same ways everybody else seasons and cooks food. We assume that everybody eats the same kinds of bread, the same type of dumplings, the same main “starch”. But just as professional and amateur chefs around the world have innovated new ways to prepare, serve, and present food, we don’t think that cooking begins as ideas in a person’s mind.

The creation of each invention begins in a person’s mind. Others may come along and improve on those inventions with ideas that increase a technology’s power, speed, versatility, even ease of use, but many of these ideas would have stayed locked in a person’s mind without language. Language is used to bring these ideas into reality.

Talk IT Up

Language is a technology. This is something we might KNOW  yet NOT know. We know that languages are invented, were invented, are continually being invented, but since the many languages are spoken and not always written, or are written and not often spoken, we may tend to think of language as a physiological expression, as an extension of our highly evolved brains, like a digestive byproduct or in the same way we think of air, a given until we don’t have it.

Language is also magical. It transforms concrete objects. It turns objects into symbols and metaphors. Language uses objects in ways they weren’t meant to be used. Intent can be communicated in ways that inspire doubt in what you see and hear. You KNEW one reality; now, because of what was said, you KNOW something quite different.

The clever kids play Rock-Paper-Scissors. They take their hands and change them into rocks, paper, and scissors. The clever kids transform their hands when they put their “potatoes in” for “One Potato, Two Potato.”

This was something mentioned in Tag 1 and Tag 2 when exploring speech acts as performative language, a language technology that transforms one thing into another by recategorizing it and changing its status. A person can become “it” as a game of Tag is initiated. A single man becomes a married man.

So, Technically…

Language is a tool.  Just like other tools, it isn’t used to perform just one task.  Vyv Evans Ph.D. lists some uses in the article here: “We use it to buy groceries in the supermarket, to get a job, to hire or fire an employee, to buy train tickets, and to compose an email. We use it to make a telephone call, to flirt, to invite someone out on a date, to propose marriage, to get married, to quarrel, and to make up afterwards. Language allows us to make friends, and enemies, to pass the time of day.” However, we also use language in these ways:

• Rhetoric
• Speech acts: “Recognition of the significance of speech acts has illuminated the ability of language to do other things than describe reality.” It can also impose and change reality. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/
• Tell stories that teach
• We use language to clarify learning and understanding
• Tell stories that entertain
• Tell stories that inspire
• Tell stories to honor another
• We use language to explore feelings and emotions
• We use language to find answers to many different kinds of questions.
• We use language to ask many different kinds of questions.
• We use language to produce a number of emotional intelligence functions like self-regulation and empathy.
• We use language to sing songs.

We use language to share what is inside of us--our thoughts and experiences--with others. No single language is enough though. Written language is limited, but so is spoken language.

Spoken language is different from written language. Spoken language is performed. The performance is full of facial expressions, hand motions, body shifts, even changes in pitch.

These languages are not enough either.

The Nuts and Bolts

“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

― George Orwell, 1984

Language is a complex tool. It works in many different ways, but the techniques and strategies used to achieve various effects are constantly being developed. It describes reality as it is perceived and experienced, but it also can change reality in social and legal spaces. It can reflect what is in your mind, but it can also change your thoughts and feelings, changing your mind.

Language can also be used to describe itself.

Considering the magical abilities of language though it becomes clear that language can become many different things depending on how you describe it, how you use it, as well as where and when you use it. Underlying these many incarnations of language though, you must always remember that it is the closest we come to understanding the human mind.

References:

Wikipedia contributors. (2018, December 26). Culinary arts. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:29, January 5, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Culinary_arts&oldid=875390522