Inappropriate parallelism

I’ve been teaching at elite colleges for over twenty years, and one thing that persistently frustrates me is the students’ generally fluent ability to manipulate symbols without seeming to engage with the underlying context. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, and all that. My theory is that in high school these students were trained to be able to write a five-paragraph essay on anything at all.

I was reminded of this when reading an article on the recent airline disruptions in Europe, where Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes:

A friend with no previous interest in airline mechanics explained over the phone how two planes had already been affected. Another proffered a detailed description of the scientific process by which the ash enters the engine, melts from the heat, and turns back into stone–not what one wants inside one’s airplane engines, really.

Others have become mystics. A British friend sees this as “judgment for the bad things we have done to the Earth.” . . .

So far, so good. But then:

Though it is uncanny, I [Applebaum] do understand why some want science to explain this odd event and why others see the revenge of the volcano gods.

Huh? It seems a bit . . . anthropological of her to put science and “the volcano gods” in this sort of parallelism. It’s no big deal, really, it just reminds me of a remark I once read that newspapers were better in the old days: Back when “journalists” were “reporters” and didn’t have college educations, they just reported the facts and had neither the obligation to understand the world nor the inclination to smooth out reality to fit the contours of their well-rounded sentences. As a college teacher, I’m the last person to endorse such an idea, but it does have its appeal.

P.S. No, I doubt that Applebaum herself thinks of scientific and volcano-god explanations as equivalent. But that’s my point: she wrote something that she (probably) doesn’t really believe and, I suspect, she didn’t really think clearly about, just because it fit the flow of her article. It was symbol-manipulation without full context.

8 thoughts on “Inappropriate parallelism

  1. I don't know, it reads more like a juxtaposition of a sensible response and a wacky one to me. The fact that they're not parallel responses is what gives the statement its kick, right?

    However, the fact that it is unclear only strengthens your argument that reporters have become too clever.

  2. I rather think regular journalism benefits from critical thinking and some familiarity with the material. Witness the Bush tens-of-billions budget error that was propagated through every news outlet, and the rather dismal state of science journalism. If I were the grand poo-bah of the universe, I would decree journalism to be a professional grad program.

    Applebaum's column is an op/ed, of course, so whatever. But that style of column, the "I'm an idiot. And here's why" column, I just find irritating.

  3. In high school I once wrote a five paragraph essay on why five paragraph essays are a waste of time and never used by anyone in the real world with an iota of intelligence.

  4. it's an opinion column, though, not a reporting article – as far as I know those have existed for a long time, so going back to the good old days would probably not help. I think there is something about that clever (though often mixed) metaphor or parallelism that seems to be encouraged/cherished/tolerated in opinion writing.
    Thomas Friedman, perhaps the most successful op-ed columnist today, is a prime offender.

  5. I don't see a problem in your particular example. She is not arguing that that "science" and "volcano gods" are equivalent, but rather that they are opposed. Her observation is that this dichotomy is strangely understandable ("uncanny") to her.

    From your comment, it seems you'd prefer her to leave out any commentary or interpretation at all, but would you instead prefer that she add caveats such as: "Though it is uncanny, I do understand why some want science to explain this odd event (their intelligence and wisdom be praised) and why others see the so-called "revenge" of so-called volcano "gods" (those ignorant fools)."?

    I would also point out that the article is in Slate magazine, along with "Gosh, the new iPhone looks disappointing" and "Did Vikings really wear horned helmets?".

    I hear your point about context, though. It's similar to one of my pet peeves, which is the phrase "I hate theory (classes)" that you hear in some circles. Without theory, you have no learning at all, but many people have been burned early on by poor presentations of "theory" by those who don't understand it (particularly in math classes) and equate "theory" with "useless", "confusing", "complicated", etc.

  6. In general, Applebaum would be one of the last people I would suspect in mysticism and such. However, her husband in Polish foreign minister and he (and her) could have easily been on the plane that crushed in Russia. Adding the circumstances of that flight, greater openness to things supernatural becomes quite understandable.

  7. So, you are claiing that high school writing teachers (i.e. English Teachers) are better than science, math and social studies teachers?

Comments are closed.