A limited defense of Camille Paglia -- coming soon

Camille Paglia's article, The Magic of Images, has been attracting some fairly withering criticism the last few days. Nicole Wyatt goes after Paglia for an unsupported -- although perhaps not unsupportable -- assertion that "[T]he computer, with its multiplying forums for spontaneous free expression from e-mail to listservs and blogs, has increased facility and fluency of language but degraded sensitivity to the individual word and reduced respect for organized argument, the process of deductive reasoning". Your host has no idea how one would even go about measuring a variable like "respect for organized argument".

Mark Liberman makes a charge that doesn't have to be the case, though:

It worries me that the discussion of this topic -- whether in the comments on Rivka's earlier post or in the blogosphere at large -- has been so lop-sided. Those who are skeptical of Paglia's views cite studies, quote statistics and suggest models, whereas Paglia's defenders, like Camille herself, don't seem to be able to get past arguments like "People who deny that attention spans have gotten shorter are just whistling past the graveyard" or "The "factual" basis for believing it has become attenuated is simply the fact that it has. I taught college literature for twenty years, and I can testify it has. The facts are in front of my eyes. Anybody who denies this is happening is being willfully obtuse."

As he goes on to point out, though, the fact that nobody has defended Paglia's point statistically doesn't mean there are no such stats. So SC has decided to take up the banner for a few reasons: 1) he generally admires Camille Paglia, and agrees with a number of things she's written in the past ([admit it, SC, the #1 lesson you really learned from her was gratuitous self-promotion -- ed.]), 2) he thinks she's not completely wrong here, and 3) there's no gauntlet like a thrown gauntlet, there's no gauntlet I know...

Since, by Prof. L.'s indications, this is going to be a lonely effort, your host is making a special effort to do this carefully. So watch this space for a lot more over the next 48 hours. All SC is going to say for now is that the more he sees, the less he thinks she's off her rocker...

Comments

[language hat]

So does this mean there's going to be another guest blogger?

[Semantic Compositions]

No, this is a serious research piece which will be coming out in 3 or 4 parts. I've got scome interesting statistics on test scores, some data on the shifts in the cirriculum that high schoolers are actually taking, and as Mark Liberman helpfully suggested, there's some work out there indicating that reading material for young people is gettind dumbed down.

I think Paglia's thesis is a bit exaggerated, but I do believe that reading skills have become devalued in our culture, and the story isn't just the usual hand-wringing of the same people who have thought English is dying for the last 500 years. This isn't an area I'm expert in, by any means, so it's taking a while to put together a coherent defense.

[Nicole Wyatt]

So it sounds like you are intending to defend her claim about the trend - decreasing literacy - and not necessarily her claim about the cause?

[Semantic Compositions]

Yes, that's correct. I don't think there's much evidence to suggest that TV = shorter attention spans, or at least I haven't found anything that strikes me as a great argument for it; however, I think there's a fairly strong case to be made that reading skills are taking a dive.

[E M Bloom]

I doubt anyone is still reading this post but I came across it by a related search. To "defend" Camille seems utterly superfluous. If you have any love for the English language and have paid any attention from either side of the teacher's desk her basic assertions are depressingly self-evident, at least in the U.S.. Global literacy as such is increasing as far as I've read. This a predictable correlary of ongoing industrialization and urbanization, but has nothing to do whatsoever with the quality of that literacy in places where there was a very high percentage to begin with. The real point is the drop off from parent to child in middle and upper class America. I believe no small part of the blame falls on what I call the regime of self-esteem, which always places education and actual skill level second, and often a distant second. There are exceptions of course, and we should all aspire to be one, rather than attack (typically in ad hominum fashion)those who call attention to the problems that we face and teachers in particular.