Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? 

Chomsky.

1.

The first thing I write down is TADOMA METHOD OF LANG. ACQUISITION.

Later, I Google it. The top hit is Wikipedia: “Tadoma is a method of communication utilized by deafblind individuals, in which the listener places their little finger on the speaker’s lips and their fingers along the jawline. The middle three fingers often fall along the speaker’s cheeks with the little finger picking up the vibrations of the speaker’s throat.”

It’s the Helen Keller method. I learned more about it, beyond The Miracle Worker, when I watched an early Werner Herzog documentary, Land of Silence and Darkness, about a woman who worked with the German deafblind community in the 1970s. The thing that struck me the hardest was when she said that most of the deafblind live their lives without being touched by other humans. Her technique led with touch. She took Herzog to film a deafblind man in his 90s whose life had been one long experience of isolation. She placed a baby chimpanzee in the old man’s arms. The friendly baby, not being human, did not register the man’s otherness from the rest of humanity, so began happily touching the old man’s face with gentle baby chimp curiosity. The old man began to weep, and indeed, so did I.  That was my lesson in the Tadoma Method before Chomsky named it for me.

2. 

The second thing I write down is PLATO’S THEORY OF REMEMBRANCE. 

Language acquisition must be a memory carried from a prior life. The problem with this is the assumption that at least one prior life was literate. He also assumes his prior life was human, but life takes many forms. Maybe Plato was trying to be funny but the joke landed badly. Historical records suggest that in the very next moment, Aristotle coined the phrase, “Don’t quit your day job.”

3. 

The third thing I write down is GONDRY READ DESCARTES AFTER READING CHOMSKY. 

Gondry: “He gives you the tools to doubt what he’s saying.” 

Chomsky: “The ideal of teaching, they should be taught to challenge and to question.” 

This is what all learning should be. People have lived by an assumption that if something is in print, it must be true. Technology’s fluidity undermines the permanence of print. We have more communicative platforms now, more investigative instruments. We build rockets, literally, metaphorically. The hardest part is choosing. 

Chomsky continues… Teaching shouldn’t be pouring water into a vessel, it should be laying out a string for the student to travel any way she chooses. 

This is such a radical, beautiful idea. No bureaucracy would allow it. Here, too, technology has an opportunity to sneak in undetected, providing that string to the explorer. Public schools in Texas run on discipline. Ratings. Numbers. In my two years of teaching experience, there has been no mention of curiosity or imagination or wonder from the district, the administrators, or the students. It is the opposite of Chomsky’s string; it’s a vessel that leaks. 

I wrote down more. I’ll be reading more, too. Chomsky, Descartes, wherever the string leads…