George Steiner on the History of Literacy

Рет қаралды 37,459

5 жыл бұрын

Author: George Steiner, speaking at the Living Literacies conference (November 2002) at York University in Toronto, delivers a lecture on the history of literacy.
Source: homeworkzone.tvokids.com/tran...

Пікірлер: 59

@larisaficulle6633 3 жыл бұрын

The most beautiful lecture I have ever heard. Not a word, not even one, is to forget. Heartfelt thanks for uploading.

@jeromechiu 4 жыл бұрын

00:00 Literacy has a very short history 01:55 Its origins are those of priesthood--"an aristocracy of the intellect". 03:59 Even during its brief "golden age", literacy level couldn't be easily assessed. 06:54 The sacredness of the Foundational Text of a civilisation 07:13 Steiner's encounter with ANC Leaders at Nadine Gordimer's during Apartheid. 08:14 "We don't have a Foundational Text" (ANC leader) 09:44 The sacredness of the Foundational Text of a civilisation--recap. 11:00 The arts of memory and the central role of "learning by heart". 11:54 "What you love, you would want to have inside you." 12:46 Russian scholar who went blind but dictated her translation of Byron's Don Juan from memory. 14:08 Mandel'shtam's poetry survived because 10 people had learned them by heart. 14:52 Pasternak and 2000+ people reciting Shakespeare's Sonnet 30. 16:15 Silence and solitude, and its loss in modernity. 17:06 "There is no [peer] pressure, except one's own integrity." 17:24 One cannot read a difficult text without total concentration. 19:02 "Nature speaks mathematics." (Galileo) 20:04 An American visitor and the Cambridge scientist who visited Stockholm "once". 21:21 The 3 great problems scientists are trying to solve 23:04 To solve them, we need numeracy. 23:32 Andrew Wiles and how he proved Fermat's Last Theorem 26:49 "Literature [by contrast] has scarcely begun to be serious." 28:35 The 2nd element in the subversion of literacy: the status of death 30:21 Literacy has been one of the main strategies against death. 31:24 "The harsh desire to last" 31:45 Today, this desire for immortality has largely gone. 33:28 "The desire to last [is linked to] a transcendent belief, now no longer available." 34:12 In our new world of IT, literacy is intricately linked with numeracy. 35:20 Orality, reading and writing will take on highly specialised functions, like in our pre-modern past. 35:50 4 levels of close reading 36:40 Know the words; understand grammar! 38:09 The importance of knowing the basics and learning by heart 39:28 "All things excellent are difficult." (Spinoza) 40:42 Like literacy, the teaching of numeracy is also in great danger. 41:12 Example of mathematics as a universal language at IAS, Princeton 42:38 How to teach mathematics to a child: Steiner's example 44:32 Bridges to aid in understanding mathematics: architecture and music 47:40 "The supreme mystery of human sciences: the invention of the melody" (Levi-Strauss) 48:48 Pay as much to teachers in schools as university professors, and it'll work. 50:35 Honour teachers by making teaching the most rewarding, not most punishing, career 53:30 Honour the students by provoking them, by "calling them out" 55:51 "The two most complex processes on this planet are the mathematics of the string quartet and the translation of a Chinese philosophic sentence." (I.A. Richards) 57:12 The End

@Atanu 3 жыл бұрын

@Jerome Chiu. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

@luisgalleguillos4868 3 жыл бұрын

Great summary ! Jolly good effort. You deserve a medal !

@shahzadzafar71 3 жыл бұрын

Bless you

@aqualyu6784 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much.

@josephmarknatuzzi6356 2 жыл бұрын

Thank You! I wish to mention the 3 Holy Grails, not yet understood; especially how one drink leads to alcoholism. It is an upward battle. Someday science might find a solution. I loved the idea of the "Foundational text" It brought to my mind the book Alcoholics Anonymous!" Since 1939 the alcoholic has a way out against the symptoms of excessive-drinking. The Foundational Text! Even today the mass media has called it Cultist. Well! We will call you out! Beer is the third most consume beverage after water and tea in the world. I like the part of Mr George S. on reading and concentration! The book Alcoholics Anonymous has sold 27 million copies; nothing, nothing to the problems we face today!!! Alcoholism and Drug Addiction. Yet as Mr. George S. spoke Endure! Endure! Endure! 🙏 Yes I am responsible! Anywhere to ANYONE who listens to the melody of the soul in pain and through the finer arts of listening will bear witness. The whole world needs the attention of the singular listener

@JordanSullivanadventures 7 ай бұрын

This is electrifying, enrapturing, spellbinding. I was going to watch a short snippet, but I absolutely cannot tear myself away. His words are important. There's a part of me that desires someday to write and speak in a manner that echoes this.

@tenzinsangpo321 4 жыл бұрын

God bless whoever uploaded this video. Pleasure and honor always to listen to this gem.

@Funshowe 2 жыл бұрын

Indeed, because it is a treasure

@user-ll1rp3sl5l 4 жыл бұрын

Rest In Peace George Steiner. Last Monday, February 3, our teacher talked about your translation theories in our traductologie lectures, and I saw the news of your passed-away that night on the Le Monde front page.

@kellyanquoe 4 жыл бұрын

what you don't know by heart you haven't loved deeply enough....

@anuradhainamdar8967 2 жыл бұрын

Astounding knowledge. Feel as if you are under a spell. Keep on listening to the end. In his speech he celebrates language.

@nasar8480 3 жыл бұрын

A prescient delight. Thank you.

@sattarabus Жыл бұрын

Pitch above the heads of your students, exhorts Steiner--one of the last Rennaissance polymaths. Honour them. Provoke them. Each of them is equipped with an innate spark. The teacher blows it into a lambent flame. Three cheers for G Steiner !

@pfm1661 4 жыл бұрын

Stimulating lecture by a great mind. An intellectual rock star in knowledge and wisdom.

@Neuroneos 5 жыл бұрын

Longue vie à monsieur Steiner.

@Neuroneos 4 жыл бұрын

Tristesse.

@hatidjesabri7326 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for uploading. What a gem!

@luisgalleguillos4868 3 жыл бұрын

Yes, stories were told by memory in ancien times, not only in the bronze age in Europe but also in the Amazon Jungle. During the time of Troy there were specialists at story telling. They had the rythm of verses and artifacts of poetry like rime to help them remember the lines but I venture to say that there was more than that. Before the story telling an ambiance was created around a fire, the flames casting shadows and the amber sparkles rising above to mingle with the very bright stars of the night. Music and chanting was present as well as invocation of the sacred spirits of the heavens and forests as well as spirits of the long gone ancestors who may have reincarnated into animsls like lions or sharks. The story teller then was in a sort of trance , no doubt aided by some special plants, but it was the audience who by some misterious force would bring forth from the story teller or bard the fantastic narratives to unite a community.

@shaunlanighan813 3 жыл бұрын

This confirms my addition of this great man to my list of favourite Professors which includes Feynman and Penrose . If I may critique though it was the Somme, July 1st 1916.

@lidiaadobato6667 4 жыл бұрын

It's not usual for scholars to be clear. He speaks with love for the listener. I don't understand why they include a translation program in the video, which often turns the speech into a Groucho Marx script.

@freeri87 5 жыл бұрын

Such an authority!

@christophermorgan3261 3 жыл бұрын

Don't think I've ever seen so many people taking notes at a public lecture.

@nicolassimion6967 4 жыл бұрын

He is genius !

@tallmikbcroft6937 11 ай бұрын

Remarkable man .. a wonderful Fellow

@JohnTimothyRatliffe 5 жыл бұрын

Enormous!

@lucasnunesbm 2 жыл бұрын

Charles Carqueijo, por acaso não teria esse vídeo legendado? Desde já, agradeço pelo upload.

@Gabrielledestrey 4 жыл бұрын

Un grand esprit - une merveille à écouter - Qui pourrait me donner le nom d'un intellectual aujourd'hui qui lui arriverait à la cheville de ce géant?

@artemisios 10 ай бұрын

Awesome as everything he said or wrote.

@geoffreygeorgeattard 2 жыл бұрын

Elegantly beautiful!

@okaytoletgo 10 ай бұрын

Did not publish: Siddhartha Gautama

@NostromoJames 3 жыл бұрын

It is relevant to ask: is this type of doc shown at schools?

@harshwilly 4 жыл бұрын

Jesus writing on the earth may be a later insertion into the New Testament but he began to preach the Gospel in a synagogue where it says he opened the book of Isaiah and began to read... Luke 4 - 17 is it possible to read without knowing how to write? possible, but unlikely. nevertheless the man is erudite and well worth a listen.

@johnholmes912 3 жыл бұрын

he probably knew the passage by heart, and recited rather than read it

@luisgalleguillos4868 3 жыл бұрын

@@johnholmes912 Since Jesus did not publish and since he did not appear in the N. Testament until 300 years after his supposed death, his existance is very much in doubt, like King Solomon's .

@bostonseeker 8 ай бұрын

In later antiquity, we have good evidence that reading was more common than writing. Centuries of pedagogy have made both easier to learn, especially writing. When she was younger, my daughter learned how to read a couple years before learning to write. It's likely Jesus knew how to read, but also chanted the Isaiah passage with the trope. Like with a musical score, the melody makes it easier to remember the words, and he was probably mixing reading the text and reciting/chanting from memory. All the ancient words for reading implied chanting or reciting out loud; viz., Hebrew "qoreh" comp. to Arabic "qur'an," recitation. The oldest NT material was written by followers of Paul in the mid-first century CE, not 300 years later (more like 20 years later). The earliest material was probably in Aramaic by Jesus' immediate followers and later copied and translated into Greek (as the three synoptic gospels are full of Aramaicisms). The only catch is that the canonical NT was written by followers of Paul, who never knew Jesus, only the movement he started.

@StuJones-gn7te 3 ай бұрын

Historians struggle to explain why the book of exodus tells the everyday people to write down the words of the ten commandments everywhere, why plebians of Rome demanded that all laws be written down and how/why ancient Germanic runes based.on Roman characters have the same sounds they had in Latin, WHILE simultaneously claiming that virtually NO ONE could read. My guess is that literacy in the Hebrew commonwealth and subsequent kingdoms, as well as during the Roman Empire, was VERY widespread, so widespread that we didn't get to similar rates of literacy in the Western World until the late 19th or early 20th centuries. I also believe this myth of ancient illiteracy probably stems from the widespread illiteracy among common people as recently as the.early to mid 19th century. Our 19th century ancestors had more knowledge of the world and greater technology than the Romans, but they couldn't read, so obviously the Romans couldn't either. I might also point out that a significant percentage of ancient writings are of ordinary, every day things like shopping lists and lists of chores to do. This alone implies that a lot more than the wealthy elite could read.

@vinm300 3 жыл бұрын

21:00that anecdote is redolent of Cambridge elitism. The high table : ask Tom Sharpe (Porterhouse Blue). One can imagine the laureate keeping his head low with elite disdain, that his achievements aren't universally acknowledged. Then replying with a single word, "Once". Who engages in conversation and answers in such a terse way ? A Cambridge Don. Could you imagine Richard Feynman saying "Once" ?

@vinm300 3 жыл бұрын

Of the great C19th scientists I couldn't tell you which ones had Nobels. But for the Humanities, because they have no object criterion with which to judge themselves, they crave the Nobel. Like an audience with the Pope. To be beatified by Stockholm : writers dream about it. Look at Steiner's face as he mentions "The Nobel", he speaks it with a reverential hush. They do make you laugh - the Humanities, with their elitism, arrogance and self-importance.

@vinm300 3 жыл бұрын

I've no idea whether Niels Bohr won a Nobel, but his Copenhagen Interpretation is now largely ignored. I think Millikan won one for his oil-drop electron experiment, but subsequent research showed he altered his experimental data to fit the result. There was a controversy over Pulsars - Jocelyn Burnell had discovered them as a PhD student, and was given no credit. But they were journeyman scientists, not the path-finders.

@vinm300 3 жыл бұрын

That anecdote exposes the small mindedness of the Cambridge high table in Humanities. One can imagine the Humanities common room buzzing with Nobel related tittle-tattle. Then the results are announced : the beatification of some lucky sod.

@vinm300 3 жыл бұрын

Having slept on it, I think I now know the moral of this Nobel Prize story, it is this :- The Scientist sitting at the high-table, is so benighted in his humanities-scholarship, that he fails to recognize the august presence of a Nobel Prize winner, and speaks to him about Scandinavian holidays as if the beatified Nobel Prize winner were just an ordinary person.

@nedkelly05 2 жыл бұрын

@@vinm300 Steiner says he has had the privilege to live among the great scientists. This would be at Ballilol Collge. The Nobel honour roll looks like this: Sir Cyril Hinshelwood (1937 jointly for Chemistry), Linus Pauling (F) (1954 for Chemistry), George Wells Beadle (F) (1958 for Medicine), Sir John Hicks (1972 for Economics); Robert Solow (F) (1998 for Economics), Gunnar Myrdal (F) (1974 for Economics) Baruch Blumberg (M) (1976 for Medicine) Peter Diamond (F) (2010 for Economic Sciences), Oliver Smithies (2007, jointly for Medicine) No Humanities here. Maybe the irony was lost on the American guest.