The Write Advice 213: KAY BOYLE

 

How to release reluctant students to speech is the first problem for the teacher of writing.  At times the young find it as difficult to express their inner thoughts in words as do those whose minds have solidified into all but unbreakable moods.  But why, after all, should this inability to speak with the heart as well as with the lips be blamed on 'restrictive teaching'?  Is it not more a case of restrictive thinking (induced by restrictive living) causing this muteness, which perhaps no teacher can cure?  One can suggest reading to such students — great poetry, great novels — to help allay the fear of speaking.  But one cannot be sure that the students will dare to understand the words that other men have said.  It takes courage to say things differently: caution and cowardice dictate the use of the cliché.… Most adults, having somehow lost touch with the great simplicities, have forgotten that to write is to speak of one’s beliefs.  Turning out a typescript with the number of words neatly estimated in the upper right hand corner of the first page has nothing to do with writing.  Neither have questions about the prices paid by Harper’s Magazine or The Atlantic Monthly or The Ladies’ Home Journal or Esquire.  Writing is something else entirely, as the young instinctively know.

 

 

'The Teaching of Writing' [reprinted in Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays of Kay Boyle, 1985]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of a US-based 

organisation dedicated to celebrating the life and

work of writer, educator and political activist KAY 

BOYLE (1902–1992):

https://kbs.hypotheses.org/

 

 

 

 

 

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Poet of the Month 085: KAY BOYLE

 

 

The Write Advice 193: CAN XUE

 

 

The Write Advice 113: ELIZABETH McKENZIE

 

Think About It 077: BOYKIN CURRY

 

For twenty years, the DNA of nearly every financial institution… morphed dangerously.  Each time someone at the table pressed for more leverage and more risk, the next few years proved them 'right.'  These people were emboldened, they were promoted and they gained control of ever more capital.  Meanwhile, anyone in power who hesitated, who argued for caution, was proved 'wrong.'  The cautious types were increasingly intimidated, passed over for promotion.  This happened every day in almost every financial institution, over and over, until we ended up with a very specific kind of person running things.

 

'There is a Silver Lining' [Newsweek, 11 October 2008]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read more about the work of North American financier, educator and textbook author BOYKIN CURRY:

 

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/6197/boykin-curry

 

 

 

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Think About It 062: ELI PARISER

With Google personalized for everyone, the query 'stem cells' might produce diametrically opposed results for scientists who support stem cell research and activists who oppose it.  'Proof of climate change' might turn up different results for an environmental activist and an oil company executive.  In polls, a huge majority of us assume search engines are unbiased.  But that may be just because they're increasingly biased to share our own views.  More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.

 

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You (2011)

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of North American author, activist, entrepreneur and pioneer in the field of online citizen engagement ELI PARISER:

 

 

https://www.elipariser.org/

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 058: ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY

The perilous time for the most highly gifted is not youth.  The holy sensibilities of genius — for all the sensibilities of genius are holy — keep their possessor essentially unhurt as long as animal spirits and the idea of being young last; but the perilous season is middle age, when a false wisdom tempts them to doubt the divine origin of the dreams of their youth; when the world comes to them, not with the song of the siren, against which all books warn us, but as a wise old man counselling acquiescence in what is below them.

From a letter to her friend Louisa Hawthorne, 1838


 

Use the link below to read more about the life and work of North American writer, educator and transcendentalist publisher ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY (1804–1894):

 

https://www.thoughtco.com/elizabeth-palmer-peabody-biography-3530587

 

 

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