So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[tonyb]

Shouldn't that be in quotes?

Are you suggesting I’m not the first to have said that?

 

[Edward]

^^^^^
If it was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.

You're a stickler for the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramiac only?

I'm rather fond of Eugene Peterson's "The Message". It gets looked down on by serious scholars for being more strictly a paraphrase than a translation, I believe, but I rather enjoy how the removal of chapter and verse delineations (an Elizabethan invention, if memory serves) let the narrative flow better, somehow.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A vote here for Edgar Goodspeed's "An American Translation." It keeps chapter and verse numbers, but it does away with the traditional Bible two-column page formatting and agate type. The result is much easier to read, and the translation into 1920s American English flows very well.

 

[belfastboy]

We can argue, as we do here, about this or that grammar issue, but as to the above, my nieces and nephews (and a few close-friends' kids) - now ranging in age from mid teens to late twenty - several who are college graduates, all but can't write a respectable paragraph or do basic math in their head. Yes, one is a pretty good writer and one (maybe two) seem okay with math, but overall, they are, and I'm just going to say it, embarrassing. Yet, again, all are high school graduates and several have four-year college degrees.

I don't say anything to them - not my place - but I am amazed to see a high school or college graduate who can't write a short, grammatically correct and coherent note or do "ten percent off $20" in his or her head. I saw one grab his phone to do that calculation just this past Christmas. As to writing, it appears several of them do not have a basic understanding of sentence structure - forget about all the grammar minutia we "fight" about here at FL.

My cousin's son lived with us for a semester so he could play for a local premier travelling baseball team. He was a middling student but a great pitcher. I was appalled at his English composition skills....in my view a junior high school level at best. He ended up with a scholarship to an El Paso based university. The amazing thing was his grades in English shot up to A+. When I inquired as to how that happened he advised that as the only Anglo in his entire class, all the rest were Hispanic with English as a second language, marking on the Bell Curve served him well. First time in his life students were coming to him for answers and direction. His skills had not improved it was just the bar was lowered by a large margin.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Are you suggesting I’m not the first to have said that?

Well, if you were born in the mid 19th Century, you might be the first. On the other hand ...

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
And in English, too!

 

[Zombie_61]

A vote here for Edgar Goodspeed's "An American Translation." It keeps chapter and verse numbers, but it does away with the traditional Bible two-column page formatting and agate type. The result is much easier to read, and the translation into 1920s American English flows very well.

Some time around 1979-80 when "Born Again" Christianity was becoming a thing, a friend gave me a version of the Bible that had been "translated" into modern (i.e., circa mid- to late-1970s) American English. When I tried to read it, two things struck me immediately. First was that their translation of certain words and/or phrases differed from my own, and to this day I don't know whose interpretation was closer to being correct. Second was that the Bible sounded somewhat absurd in modern English and my brain, trying to make sense of it, presented that "narrative" voice I hear whenever I read as the stereotypical "Valley Girl". "So, like, there was this filthy hippie guy named Jesus with long hair and a beard, but if he showered, cut his hair, and shaved, he would have been a total Baldwin. So, like, he totally thought he was God's son...as if!!!" No, seriously. I couldn't finish it.

 

[belfastboy]

"Progressive Education" began in the US in the late 1890s, and was commonplace in the United States by the middle of the 1910s. No American now living, nor their parents, ever experienced an actual old-fashioned "readin' writin' rithmatick'" education, nor would they actually want to. "Taught to the tune of a hickory stick" didn't actually teach a child much that would be of long-term value, and the literacy rate in the United States in the late 19th Century, despite internet memes showing Victorian sixth graders doing what would to day be considered college level work, was embarassingly low. If you have old family letters going back to the 19th Century era, look them over -- chances are you'll find plenty of mangled grammar, poor spelling, and semi-literate expression.

I can diagram a sentence just fine, having learned from Warriner's Grammar in junior high school. Bet I never have, in nearly forty years as a professional writer, had any need or call to do so. Diagramming sentences is highly overrated.

But I will agree that mathematical fads have had a negative impact. New Math messed me up bad. I can one-to-one match and explain set theory I learned in the first grade, but I can't do basic pencil and paper arithmetic beyond about a fourth grade level. By the time calculators came along I was already a lost cause.

I believe it was a study from the Finnish school system that demonstrated learning the times tables, pure rote memorization, produced students with more creativity and better problem solving skills. The conclusion was the rote learning freed their minds to more creative pursuits as the recall of basic arithmetic was now automatic.
I have a diary/scrap book belonging to my great aunt that she kept on the steamer journey from Belfast to Canada in 1912. My family, decidedly working class ( I am the first Gault to attend a uni), all bought the cheapest steerage class tickets but the inscriptions in the scrap book were amazingly sophisticated. She would ask fellow passengers to write a passage in her book. In it were quotes from Shakespeare, poems by Blake all written off the top of heads by working class folk.....in very good cursive handwriting to boot.

 

[Fading Fast]

I believe it was a study from the Finnish school system that demonstrated learning the times tables, pure rote memorization, produced students with more creativity and better problem solving skills. The conclusion was the rote learning freed their minds to more creative pursuits as the recall of basic arithmetic was now automatic. ....

Speaking for my personal experience only, this ⇧ approach worked for me as the numbers "click" into place before I think about them - freeing me up to work on, as you said, problem solving. As a trader, especial before so much of it became computer driven, this was a huge edge, as I could figure some reasonably complex math in my head while others were still working on it. But away from that, I just can't imagine going through life having to pull out my phone to figure 15% off something or how to add up five items quickly.

In English, it's more nuanced. Some "rules" were drilled into me and I'm grateful as, as you said, it frees up my brain to be more creative when writing. But whereas times tables, IMHO, are just something you have to learn, even the "rules" that are drilled into you in English need your understanding to be most effective. I'm not an educator, so all I am describing is what worked for me and for me, I'm really grateful that I learned this stuff - as grueling as it was at times - the way I did. It has done exactly what you said, allowed me to use my brain to (hopefully) work on more complex problems and ideas.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I hated rote work myself. I learned far more during my education ignoring everything the teacher said and hiding in the back of the classroom reading random volumes of the encyclopedia. I still enjoy doing that myself.

When we were discussing this topic earlier, I thought a lot about my grandfather who quit school in 1917 and never looked back. I don't ever remember seeing him read anything beyond the daily paper -- all the books in the house belonged to my grandmother or to me, none were his, and I never saw him read one. I can vividly remember an instance where I asked him to read to me from a comic book -- and that he stumbled over the words.

And in thinking about this the other day, I realized -- to my surprise -- that I've never actually seen his handwriting. My grandmother always signed checks, contracts, and other paperwork in his name -- but I have only a few slightly legiblle pencil scrawlings on old receipts in his own hand. I don't think he ever actually wrote a whole page of anything -- there are no letters, nothing written that can be attributed to him anywhere in my grandmother's scrapbooks or any of the other random paperwork we've saved from the gas station.

I don't think he was illiterate -- I did see him apparently reading the newspaper every night at the supper table. But I don't believe he was *comfortably* literate, certainly not in the way my grandmother, a high school graduate was, and he was like this for his entire adult life. And judging from other men of his generation that I knew, I don't think this was particularly unusual for the time. It never came up as a matter of conversation when he was alive, and he never seemed particularly self-conscious about it. And I honestly never even thought about it until now.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Actually, we do not more have a watchmaker in our smalltown and the neighbour smalltown, where we could just walk to or drive to by bicycle.
Now, it's better to buy only watches, where you can replace the battery yourself. Or get a "watch claw".

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
An old office of mine was next to a business called Horological Services, owned and operated by a chain-smoking, heavily accented fellow named George Kajanov (sp?), who had a loupe affixed to his spectacles.

George and I got along fine. His trade was dying off, as he readily acknowledged. I recall him telling me that the watch I could buy for 10 bucks at the Bartell’s drug store around the corner was every bit as good a timepiece as a $5,000 Movado.

 

[Edward]

I don't think he was illiterate -- I did see him apparently reading the newspaper every night at the supper table. But I don't believe he was *comfortably* literate, certainly not in the way my grandmother, a high school graduate was, and he was like this for his entire adult life. And judging from other men of his generation that I knew, I don't think this was particularly unusual for the time. It never came up as a matter of conversation when he was alive, and he never seemed particularly self-conscious about it. And I honestly never even thought about it until now.

Mix of things, I expect. I'm sure there were a lot of people with dyslexia and such back in the day who were never diagnosed. Equally, anyone born to the working classes with a destiny in manual labour, maybe they weren't seen by the education board as needing some of the academic skills when basic literacy would suffice day to day?

I remember reading a study which theorised that in the North of England back in the 60s and earlier, places where you walked out of school to a guaranteed job in the factory or down the pit, many people tried much less, education wasn't seen as an 'escape' in the way that it is sometimes talked up as a route to presumed "betterment". Me, I always find it a terrible shame that academia has been taken over, at managerial level, by money men who know only the cost of selling an education, and nothing about its true value.

^^^^
An old office of mine was next to a business called Horological Services, owned and operated by a chain-smoking, heavily accented fellow named George Kajanov (sp?), who had a loupe affixed to his spectacles.

George and I got along fine. His trade was dying off, as he readily acknowledged. I recall him telling me that the watch I could buy for 10 bucks at the Bartell’s drug store around the corner was every bit as good a timepiece as a $5,000 Movado.

Especially with fewer people wearing a watch on their wrist now because their timepiece is in their pocket in the form of a mobile phone, it's interesting how watches are becoming more 'jewellery' or even 'hobby items' of a sort.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I’ve taken to wearing vintage watches, which are, with the exception of a couple-three high-end “name” brands, quite affordable.

But then, I wear “proper” hats, too.

For some reason I’ve never thought to examine at any depth, I like being perhaps hyper-aware of the hour. We have five functioning clocks on the main floor here, including one in the bathroom — analog type all, with dials, because they provide more info at a glance than digital readouts. And they have more style, too.

 

[Edward]

^^^^^
I’ve taken to wearing vintage watches, which are, with the exception of a couple-three high-end “name” brands, quite affordable.

But then, I wear “proper” hats, too.

For some reason I’ve never thought to examine at any depth, I like being perhaps hyper-aware of the hour. We have five functioning clocks on the main floor here, including one in the bathroom — analog type all, with dials, because they provide more info at a glance than digital readouts. And they have more style, too.

I went back to analogue from digital at thirteen. I found in exam situations especially, but really any time that time is sensitive, the visualisation of time division with a traditional clockface works for me.

 

[GHT]

I went back to analogue from digital at thirteen. I found in exam situations especially, but really any time that time is sensitive, the visualisation of time division with a traditional clock face works for me.

You and me both, Edward, there is something about a jewelled movement watch. Maybe it's the aesthetic, or could it simply be the clockwork movement?

 

[Fading Fast]

You and me both, Edward, there is something about a jewelled movement watch. Maybe it's the aesthetic, or could it simply be the clockwork movement?
View attachment 222008

At least part of it for me is the mechanical versus the digital. I appreciate the brilliance of the digital world, but it feels cold and soulless to me versus our old analog world were you can understand, see and feel how a "thing" works.

I am not arguing that any of this is logical - that somehow mechanical is "better" or "more alive" in any objective sense - but at an emotional level, mechanics that I can understand, see and feel bring me closer to an item.

In cars, when I was young and into them, it's part of the reason why I liked the ones up through the '60s - I understood, pretty much, what everything "under the hood" in those cars did, how they worked, etc., and could fix some of it myself. By the '70s, when they started computerizing cars and - for whatever reason - the "stuff" under the hood seemed to increase dramatically in complexity and opacity, I lost interest. I knew my days as a "weekend" mechanic were over when I took my dad's (I think) '78 Buick to the dealer and the first thing they did was plug it into a computer to diagnosis the problem.

It's the same with watches. I love the genius of a mechanical watch. While, as noted, I appreciate the brilliance of the technology behind a digital watch, they leave me emotional unmoved. But somehow, all the little wheels and gears and springs - and the ingenuity behind it all - of a mechanical watch makes it feel alive to me in a way that a digital watch just doesn't.

I own some inexpensive "vintage" mechanical watches (they cost more to service and repair periodically than any one of them did to buy) that "touch" me in a way my old (and cheap as heck) Casio never did despite the Casio being far superior at telling time (and doing a bunch of other stuff as well). I even like winding the mechanical ones in the morning, knowing I'm tightening the mainspring; hence, giving the watch the ability to do its job for another day.

 

[Edward]

I also appreciate the aspect of not being dependent on electricity or any form of power beyond clockwork for my timepiece. There aren't many things that feel that contained in terms of self-sufficiency any more.

 

[tonyb]

I’ve had jewelers tell me that watches that stopped working weren’t worth the cost of repairs. So I tossed ’em (the watches, not the jewelers) in a desk drawer. Some day they’ll be worth the trouble. I may not live to see that day, but I suspect someone will be happy I saved those things.

 

[Nobert]

I got my first pocket watch late last year: nine jewel, unadjusted, one of the cheaper models ever to roll off the banks of the Charles river. It loses about ten minutes on a good day, and is prone to just stopping in the middle of everything to take a breather and get it bearings. I still enjoy the heck out of it (and if I'm doing as well at 94 years, I'll thank whatever genetic gearsman put me together).