Yes, the colloquial nature and verbosity of the way the story is
told would be make it unacceptable in academic circles.
But - can you see how that is can be a barrier to higher
education?
The common language of academia was once New Latin and it was
revolutionary when the common, vulgar tongue of the nature
people became to become acceptable.
Yet, the formalized style hasn't changed much.
Perhaps a common style aids communication, but standards of
acceptability are perhaps what are my target, when the end-goal,
in my mind, is knowledge and understanding..
This extends all the way back into grammar school ages.
I'll give an example of how math is taught:
It happened to my nephew last year in 4th grade. It happened to
me in the 4th grade, and I'm 43 and he's 10. This is the USA,
two different states in the USA. It happened to my mother, many
years before that [we've talked about it]:
"Show your work".
Such a simple thing. We all go through it. Hopefully we manage
to forget it yet nobody I've ever talked to has.
You're given math problems and you are expected to follow a
particular set of steps to come up with an answer. Now, if you
have the answer, because you are mathematically minded, you are
penalized with the correct answer, because the method and
procedure was deemed incorrect, even though the process of
coming up with answers is ALLOWED for in mathematics (because
they _do_ come up with the right answers - I did, my mother did,
my nephew did) - yet if the visible evidence provided does not
match up a proscribed pattern, it is wrong, even though the
answer is right.
This is the crux of what I'm questioning. It slides by
generation after generation, unquestioned.
I suppose it's a proscribed elitism, based upon style, that can
affect a person's financial future and how they are perceived by
'the neighbors'. How many geniuses were lost to humanity because
they did not fit the style of the day in academia?
