Romani ite Domum
Councils ban ‘elitist’ and ‘discriminatory’ Latin phrases.
I won’t repeat the article ad nauseam, though I might at points use a reductio ad absurdum to emphasise what ought really to be a prima facie case. Many of you who read this ought to be familiar with my sesquipedalean style and fondness for lofty language that stirs the soul in lieu of satisfying the busybody with too much time on their hands.
I am not against efforts to help people understand official language per se, but in this instance the councils have gone entirely the wrong way about things. That the average reading age is twelve years old is not something to be indulged. The argument that immigrants might not get the difference between e.g. and “egg” is ultimately rather stupid as well: all that such behaviour by officialdom does is provide an unrealistically low standard for people to aspire to linguistically, and works to push people down rather than holding them up to the common linguistic standard necessary for effective communication. English is a language that cannot be artificially separated from its latin roots. Look no further than their attempts to remove the word “via” - infused into the english language and a perfectly acceptable english word, albeit one with Latin roots.
Terms such as “bona fide, eg (exempli gratia), prima facie, ad lib or ad libitum, etc or et cetera, ie or id est, inter alia, NB or nota bene, per, per se, pro rata, quid pro quo, vis-a-vis, vice versa and via” exist in the English language because they have been so clear and useful that we have not needed to construct any native version. They have worked their way into our language . Many other words likewise have assimilated so easily and have ingrained themselves so much into our linguistic heritage that one would be lost without them. Councillors, after all, work for the benefit of the public. These are no longer latin words, but english ones with latin origin. Look no further than the Plain English Campaign’s website, which offers a Diploma (joint greco-roman term) in its subject. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Where will this end? The logical conclusion of this absurd crusade is that we should ban the use of words such as “Khaki” because they did not originate from the vocal chords of a native Anglo-Saxon? Do they suggest that the medical profession rename so many procedures and body parts to satisfy their petty small-minded little war against civilisation? Should the councils rename themselves because of the latin origins of that word? Perhaps we should do away with the term politics and public as they are not sufficiently anglo-saxon to satisfy the primal urges of these syntax nazis.
We have complex words and jargon because they help to distill complex ideas into elegant terms. They may not be immediately obvious, but upon any decent inspection the meaning of terms such as “unknown unknown” (one that I have found immensely useful in the International Relations part of my degree). There are problems when you get the David Brents of this world trying to use them to give the appearance of being clever, and trying to obfuscate rather than clarify. But that is not sufficient argment as to do away with their use.
All that can be said to the guilty councils ultimately is thus: stercorem pro cerebro habetis. They are promoting the regression of the english language into infancy, spurred on by stupidity, bigotry and parochialism.
Challenges are there to be met, not banned on the grounds that they’re challenging. You cannot remove the latin heritage from the english language, and to try and do so is an act of crass stupidity.
Sphere: Related ContentCrewe and Nantwich: Who’s the Real Toff?
Every intelligent person on the left knows that Labour’s shooting itself in the foot in Crewe. They’ve turned a safe seat into a real contest. Criticism is even coming from the Guardian and Labourhome.
As someone else put it in The Times:
The Labour candidate is in Burke’s Peerage, her grandma was a Lady-in-waiting & she inherited the candidacy from her mum.
The Tory is from a family of cobblers & key cutters who fostered 80 deprived kids, inspiring him to take up family law.
And Labour say “Don’t vote for the posh toff”
Labour, after all, are hitting the poor with a stupid tax rise, and have decided that rather than fight on issues they’d prefer to prance around Crewe in top hats and tails. Rather more concerning to a class warrior though would be that they are actually wearing those clothes quite convincingly. Well, the chap on the right is. Someone needs to tell the fellow on the left of this photo that he needs to do his top button up though. Maybe Quentin Davies, that Clubland stalwart and multimillionaire ex-Tory turned Labour Class Warrior advised them?
I say old bean, let's go and patronise the workers
The contest is between a granddaughter of a Peer and a Labour Party General-secretary who is now riding on the coat-tails of her late mother’s political career, against the son of businesspeople known for their excellent treatment of employees and philanthropic activities, who pursued a career in family law to help the underprivileged. He is a classic example of a One Nation Conservative, and has been by far the more progressive candidate, especially against Labour’s patronising and vicious little dog-whistle campaign about immigration. Timpson is the true progressive in this election.
So I agree with Labour: don’t vote for the toff. What Labour fail to realise is that Moyra Tamsin Dunwoody-Kneafsey and her Labour chums are the real toffs in this election.
UPDATE: It turns out that the chap on the left (Alex Norris) actually went to public school. My comments about his top button are scaring me now, as the school he went to (Manchester Grammar) used to be headed by a Dr. Martin Stephen. Dr. Stephen is now High Master of St. Paul’s School, where he caused controversy by cracking down on pupils who failed to do up their top button. Mr. Norris Esq. has no excuse for his sartorial misdemeanours now.
Sphere: Related ContentIn the Name of Academic Freedom
Reading The Week today I came across a surreal article that reported a Professor Priya Venkatesan is suing students of Dartmouth College for what amounts to robustly questioning her opinions. The natural response to such an article was a healthy dose of skepticism combined with disbelief. I ventured on to find out a bit more about the case to see whether or not this was misrepresentative scandal-mongering, or a situation so daft you couldn’t make it up. An interview with the professor herself bears out the accusations. Her complaint stems back to an incident in which a student challenged a theory of eco-feminism that she was presenting, and was applauded by classmates (predominantly female) for the effort. After this ‘disturbing’ exercise of independent thought and research, the Professor felt the need to take a week off to ‘recover’, and is now taking legal action as a means of restitution. The history of frivolous litigation has hit a new low when a professor sues her students for disagreeing with her. Professor Venkatesen not only deserves to lose the case, but ought to be banned from holding any form of teaching position whatsoever for her shocking attitude towards academic freedom, debate and inquisitiveness.
I say “teaching” rather than “academia” as I am not fully qualified to question the intellectual capabilities of Professor Venkatesen. I have no desire to dismiss her PhD or other academic pursuits, and I have little specialist knowledge of the areas and disciplines she covers to be able to mount a full of criticism of her theories. Academic skill and teaching ability are not linked: I have been taught by Professors who are fantastic teachers as well as gifted academics, but I have also sat in lectures by distinguished professors whose utter inability to teach resulted in lectures on fascinating subject matter becoming as interesting as watching paint dry, as engaging as a concrete wall, and as rewarding as going to the dentist. The question at stake is not her intellectual capacity: she is probably an intelligent and successful academic (even if she cannot construct a sentence properly). The issue is whether or not she is fit to teach undergraduates, and, based on her own words and the experience of others, one can only conclude that she is not.
The first, and most obvious, reason is that she is a poor lecturer. She has been reported to have gone completely off-syllabus on several occasions. She is alleged to have used an introductory first-year (US) course to lecture students about her own academic interests and theories rather than teaching students the course they were supposed to receive. Furthermore, she has a significant number of complaints made against her by students that she responded to by means of intimidation. In the words of her former students:
Aside from the fact that I learnt nothing of value in this class besides the repeated use of the word “postmodernism” in all contexts (whether appropriate or not) and the fact that Professor Venkatesan is the most confusing/nonsensical lecturer ever, the main problem with this class is the personal attacks launched in class. Almost every member of the class was personally attacked in some form in the class by either intimidation or ignoring your questions/comments/concerns. If you decide to take this class, prepare to NOT be allowed to express your own opinions in class because you have “yet to obtain your Ph.D/masters/bachelors degree”. We were forced to write an in-class essay on “respect” (and how we lacked it) because we expressed our views on controversial topics and some did not agree with the views of “established scholars” who have their degrees.
Additionally, your essays will (at most) receive 2 lines worth of feedback, along with a miserable letter grade.
All in all, there are much better ways to understand science, technology, and society than to suffer through ten weeks of emotional battering.
What this further indicates is an attitude utterly unacceptable for a teacher in a learning environment. She possesses a narrow-minded and condescending view of her students and detractors that innoculates her against all criticism and stifles debate. She dismisses her students as narrow-minded bigots with some ineffable “agenda”. She claims that she didn’t like their ‘arguing with me about every point that I was making’, dismissing them on the grounds that ‘frankly, they don’t even have a BA’. Any student of logic will know that this is an ad hominem fallacy that has no place in sensible debate. She claims that such questioning ‘totally undermined the whole academic system… because it never became about the students meeting my expectations’. Such is her hubris that she banned questions in class and dismissed numerous complaints about her incompetence as just ‘oil and water’ tension. Her paranoia is such that she makes allegations of racism despite stating ‘no-one made a comment about my ethnicity’. She claims that a student asking how “Gattaca” was spelt was a swipe at her non-tenured status, hatched in connivance with her boss, and accuses her detractors of immaturity and mental illness. She makes numerous accusations that are little more than assertions backed up with flimsy, questionable or no evidence. At no point does she demonstrate any form of engagement with criticisms raised.
To claim that the role of a student is ‘to meet his or her [Professor's] expectations’ is to encourage such sickening sycophancy as to discourage the curiosity and disagreement that is the spirit of academia. Rather than accusing students who counter her claims with researched opinions of ‘fascism [and] demagoguery’, she should be applauding their initiative to research, their intellectual curiosity to challenge assumptions, and their courage to stand up and criticise the ideas of others. Critical reflection and engagement with ideas presented is considered one of the key goals of any student at the college I go to, and one of our professors congratulated students for “challenging received wisdom”, encouraging them to continue to do so. The unpolished first engagements with complex ideas by a freshman student should be encouraged, not dismissed because the proponent doesn’t have their degree yet. To be so condescending about one’s students suggests that Professor Venkatesan does not really understand that teaching is about nurturing those initial sparks of criticism and initiative, not snuffing them out because you don’t happen to agree with them or they aren’t expressed in the most advanced manner.
All this would be bad enough on its own, but what worsens matters, and leads to the conclusion that she should be banned from teaching, is her attempt to pursue a lawsuit against her former students. To resort to such crass intimidation of first-year students, extending to writing a polemical book in which she threatens to ‘name names’, demonstrates further contempt for her students and an unwillingness to use the very reason that underlies the academic tradition to persuade her critics to accept her point of view. This cynical use of the very laws supposed to protect one’s freedoms represents an attack on free expression, inquisitiveness and discussion. It is made all the more galling in that it is being pursued by an academic claiming that she wants to uphold such freedoms. The case is an insult to the law; a legally illiterate example of crying wolf and wild exaggeration in such a way that demeans the genuine cases of discrimination that occur in academic institutions. Though she claims she is ‘not the kind of person who likes to make a fuss about petty or trivial things’, this gross overreaction and display of sore losership is a disgraceful form of arrogant bullying. That it is being done by a professor against first-year students only worsens matters.
Such litigious bullying and condescencion in place of rational academic debate and the free exchange of ideas is behaviour entirely unfit for any academic, let alone a teaching one. One can only hope that Professor Venkatesan’s case is rapidly thrown out of court and she either sees the error of her ways and changes, or never teaches again.
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