=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=9CLiteracy_Makes_You_Lazy=E2=80=9D=3A_?=Saving End angered Lan guages (fwd link)

[Richard Zane Smith]

Some things we just don't take the time to commit to memory
but some of us working on the revitalization of language and reviving
ancient ceremonies
still must put in time to memorize speeches and prayers. It's important
these are not read aloud.

Memorization of speeches takes time...lots of time. TIME is what our
nervous fast-paced
dominant culture is consistently short of. When do people have the time to
memorize anything?
Some memorize during commutes.I practice memorization while rolling clay
coils in the studio,
or while working in the garden.
Memorization requires a calm place, and often some kind of methodical
routine , sanding, polishing, sweeping,
hoeing, weeding, driving, snapping beans, twisting dogbane fibers for a
bowstring....
these are the moments when the mind is free, unfettered , open and
malleable.

unéh!
Richard Zane Smith

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Anthony Webster <awebster at siu.edu> wrote:

> Apparently, prior to literacy, Harrison memorized his cell phone numbers!
> Literacy does not "make" you "lazy." Harrison seems to be ignoring a great
> deal of research on the interconnections between orality and literacy.
> Memorization, for example, has co-existed with literacy (there are a number
> of religious examples of this). Literacies are social practices. We should
> be suspicious of claims of technological determinism. akw
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Phillip E Cash Cash <
> cashcash at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
>
>> “Literacy Makes You Lazy”: Saving Endangered Languages
>>
>> Posted by Brian Clark Howard of National Geographic News on June 25, 2012
>> US
>>
>> “Literacy makes you lazy: we don’t memorize 10,000-word epic poems any
>> more,” David Harrison, the director of research for the Living Tongues
>> Institute for Endangered Languages, told an audience at the Aspen
>> Environment Forum in Colorado this past weekend.
>>
>> “I don’t even memorize cell phone numbers any more,” said Harrison, a
>> linguist who studies many of the world’s disappearing languages.
>>
>> Harrison’s group has been featured in National Geographic, and his
>> team formed a five-year joint project with NG, Enduring Voices, to
>> study some of the most important endangered language “hotspots” around
>> the world. Harrison is also an NG fellow.
>>
>> Access full article below:
>>
>> http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/25/literacy-makes-you-lazy-saving-endangered-languages/
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Anthony K. Webster, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor
> Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Anthropology
> Native American Studies Minor
> MC 4502
> Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
> Carbondale, IL 62901
> 618-453-5019
>
> http://cola.siuc.edu/undergraduate/CollegeofLiberalArtsNativeAmericanStudies.html
>
> Dream other dreams, and better!
>                                  Mark Twain
>
>


-- 
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"Think not forever of yourselves... nor of your own generation.

Think of continuing generations of our families,

think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn,

whose faces are coming from beneath the ground."             The Peacemaker,


 richardzanesmith.wordpress.com

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