Re: QED & Marshall McLuhan

At 10:25 AM 6/8/1999 -0700, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>At 09:44 AM 6/8/1999 , Anne Pemberton wrote:
>>(Excuse my choice of words above. I've just finished summarizing Brown vs.
>>Topeka for a student who cannot get sense from reading the download I gave
>>her on the case.)
>>Folks, consumers, & taxpayers (and potential tax payers) want to be 
>>included in the future, not shunted off to a side room for "illiterates". 
>
>Can you create a web page that explains Brown vs. Topeka in a
>way that someone who is illiterate could understand?  I would 
>like to see such as an example of what you and others are talking
>about.

Kynn,

	That is an interesting challenge. Depending on what else I end up with on
my plate for the summer, perhaps I could make such a web page. Just got a
call asking me to work with a dyslexic girl this summer to help increase
her reading ability to enter fifth grade, so I may combine creating such a
web page with developing some of her skills. The page would be a
combination of graphics, which need to be collected and perhaps digitized,
others would need to be created. Reducing the readability level to be
understood my someone with a low-level cognition level will be easier than
assembling the graphics to stretch it to the next lower level. 

	Let me take a stab at simplyfying: 

	"In the old days, it was OK to do mean things to African Americans that
made them feel like they weren't as good as everyone else. One way to make
African Americans feel they weren't as good as everyone else was to make
them go to different schools. African Americans didn't like going to
different schools. The didn't like being treated like they weren't as good
as everyone else."

	"In 1954, the Supreme Court said that education was too important to let
some children feel they weren't as good as everyone else because they had
to go to different schools. The Judges thought that African American
children should be allowed to go to school with everyone else so that they
would feel like true Americans when they grew up. The Judges knew that the
United States Constition says every American has the right to feel as good
as everyone else. The right to feel as good as everyone else is called
equality. The Judges thought that African Americans who were made to feel
not as good as everyone else weren't given equality. The Judges made that
thought into the law to be followed in the United States, so that all
Americans can have equality."

	"In 1954, the Supreme Court changed the law so that African Americans
didn't have to go to different school any more. Then Americans looked at
the rest of the laws that said it was OK to be mean to African Americans.
Americans decided those laws weren't OK anymore. The laws were changed.
Now, African Americans go to schools with everyone else."

That's the best I can do off the top of my head. It need more
simplification, and links to most of the two or more syllable words'
definitions, perhaps at the bottom of the page, perhaps on a separate page
with bookmarks. And someone in the discussion says they do this sort of
thing as a job and could probably do better than I did anyway ... 

				Anne






	


Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
http://www.erols.com/stevepem/apembert
apembert@crosslink.net
Enabling Support Foundation
http://www.enabling.org

Received on Wednesday, 9 June 1999 14:03:41 UTC