I am not a political supporter of former President George H.W. Bush, which should be obvious to anyone who knows me or reads my writing. But I do wish the former President good health, and a swift recovery from his recent health problems.

That said, an NPR article about his hospitalization misuses the term “notoriety” in the closing graf.

The former president was a naval aviator in World War II — at one point the youngest in the Navy — and was shot down over the Pacific. He achieved notoriety in retirement for skydiving on at least three of his birthdays since leaving the White House in 1992.

Actually, “notoriety” carries a negative connotation. It doesn’t exactly mean “infamy,” but it’s closer to that than it is to “fame.”

This fact is delivered in a response from one commenter that is technically (sort of) correct but is delivered in a vicious, snooty and self-righteous manner:

Even though I didn’t vote for him, I wish him well. I wish even more that journalists with a modicum of education will note that the term “notoriety” means famous for an evil or infamous deed. Skydiving at 80 does not count. Shame on the HR department who hired this benighted troll of a “journalist.”

Shame on the HR department? “Benighted troll”? Fuck you, asshole

Anyway, this issue sets off a comment brawl of epic proportions, which is somewhat perplexing in an article about a former President whose tenure saw us in two foreign wars (Panama and Iraq) and a major recession. The brawl is attended most reasonably by a commenter who says that “notoriety” CAN mean “famous in a positive sense,” but that’s kinda garbage.

Generally speaking, the word “notoriety” has been shifting over the years to become a synonym to “famous,” but that’s because people misunderstand it. They use it to beef up the pompousness of their writing, or spice it up, without knowing its contemporary (post-17th century) usage. Prior to that time, the word’s etymological roots make it appropriate to mean either “fame” or “infamy.”

But the 1600s are a hell of along time ago. Today, “notorious” means, or nearly means, “infamous.” (Since the meanings aren’t exactly aligned, “notorious” is a near-synonym, not a synonym, of “infamous.)

Words often migrate toward having less precise meanings, and usually because news writers don’t understand them. News is the most widely consumed form of text, and the least precisely edited form that has such wide distribution, so it can be blamed for many usage migrations that begin with impreciseness.

This is a pretty typical misusage of the word “notorious,” and in my opinion it’s not a “correct” usage based on the fact that the term is widely misused, but an incorrect usage that happens to be common.

Not knowing the proper usage of a word does not make one correct in misusing it. Nor is it a defense that “I always use it that way.” It is far less of a defense that “everyone uses it that way.” If everyone jumped off a cliff, friend, I would still grab your arm as you moved to follow them.

Overblown language is the enemy of clarity, and the enemy of genuinely powerful writing. It’s easy to do, and when usage errors or near-errors become common, it is even easier to use them and not realize that you’re using overblown language. I would say that using a term one is not entirely familiar with, whether it’s “decimate” or “safeword” or “asshat” or “prestidigitation” or “punk rock” — well, that’s a symptom both of compositional impreciseness and of a genuine desire to write vividly.

Neither one is a war crime.

I would rather have people misuse words than get lectured by stuck-up losers.

The original commenter may be right, but is also an asshole.

It’s my opinion that such “usage-police” commenters and all who pile on with their noses thrust high in the air, nostrils flared, ought to shore up their self-esteem in a way less transparently pathetic. Of course, it’s hard not to keep your nose in the air when you’ve got such a giant stick up your butt.

To me, a former copy-editor, usage police like this represent the most odious form of pompous ass. The discussion of usage correctness vs. incorrectness should not carry with it the intent of humiliating people who misuse words. Doing so carries a class bias that I find far more revolting than the misuse of language.

A discussion on writer John Shirley’s Facebook page inspired me to post this on my blog, because I don’t want to forget it.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I started really feeling the passion for learning, and the ability to do it reliably (or at least try to).

For me, what made it happen was a (long-overdue) relative absence of acute anxiety, some healing of my ambient anger about how fucked the world is, and proper medication.

But the thing that made the biggest difference for me was not being tied to the format of “lecture, reading and discussion.”

What helped me to truly love learning was (and is) being able to switch between fiction books, nonfiction books, recorded audio lectures, video lectures, audiobooks, and documentary video. I have ADHD, you see, and I don’t know if that’s why, but I lose interest in a single given format very quickly, often without losing interest in a single topic. E-books also made a huge difference…because I tend not to lose them. That might sound familiar to anyone who’s ever been the parent of an ADHD kid.

So that makes me wonder what “effective” education would look like for people like me — people with ADHD if you want to put a label on it, but there are other similar syndromes. With the relocation of ADHD to the autism spectrum, a whole range of psychiatric isues — some clinically significant, some subclinical, some undetected and others catastrophically life-altering, like severe autism — all seem to present similar challenges to the way humans perceive and assimilate data.

I wonder about a K-12, junior college and university model that incorporates more of the individual learning options available, not depending so much on lecture-reading-discussion. Lecture, which many teachers are shitty at. Reading, which — seriously — 99% of the students don’t do, and the teachers don’t usually call them on it. And discussion, which has become, in our world, not the complex interchange of ideas or even an informal debate — or, hell, even an argument. “Discussion” in most contexts too often becomes one or more of a selection of truly execrable things…ranging from bland regurgitation to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, right up to politically-motivated shoutdowns, guilt-trips and racially-coded attacks as the students seek to “educate” each other. American society needs to work on its social skills if it wants class discussion to serve an educational purpose, rather than merely being an ordeal.

I find social situations hugely anxiety-producing — and, more to the point, exactly counter to assimilating the large quantities of data I desperately need to keep my brain from revving uncontrollably to the point where it throws a rod. At the same time (so help me!) I swear, I love people. Almost nobody but me believes that, but really, I do. I love people. I love YOU. Seriously, you’re almost not as awful as books!

I josh.

In any event, there are so m any learning possibilities enabled by aggressive use of the interactive learning model. New kinds of learning are allowed by easily accessed, relatively cheap, and entirely portable audio, video and e-text.

All those formats can be accessed on a single device now — a tablet, MP3/video player or even a cell phone. The same file, or an audio version of a text file or vice-versa, can be used on multiple devices, too, with technology similar to the Kindle’s text-to-voice or Amazon’s easy bookmarking  between downloadable audio versions of books and the Kindle editions of the same books.

For instance, if a student is squirmy sitting at the computer watching a lecture, he or she can take a long walk with earphones in, switching to the audio version of the same lecture they were just watching. Or if they’re reading on a couch and falling asleep, go for a jog and listen to the audio of the book that was just sending them to dreamland.

Or you can take an iPad and go watch the lecture sitting under the tree in the park, or while walking on a treadmill, or…almost anywhere. You can even listen to audio lectures in the car…so you’re not tempted to text, of course.

At least for things like humanities, politics and the less technical, more theoretical aspects of the sciences, it seems like such a student-directed, student-paced, multi-channel model might completely transform learning for students with ADHD or other autism spectrum disorders. I know it would for me.

But it’s not just ADHD students who are smart but can’t “get” school. Plenty of students have trouble sitting still, or don’t otherwise like fitting into school’s social structures.

I come from a family of teachers, and my beloved sister and mother might give me a stern talking-to if I were to sound like I’m advocating any reduction of the number of teachers.

I’m not. Teachers are the critical element in any learning program. But just what they do, as most teachers will tell you, needs to change, to some degree, with the student. Special needs students have, well…special needs. That’s as true for gifted kids as it is for slow ones. Neither should be left behind by a one-size-fits all approach.

Having been a Chemistry major, my teacher now sister teaches middle-school science, and I think there’s no way most students are going to be able to retain science — and sure as hell not Chemistry! — without a pretty rigid structure, including in-classroom demonstrations and labs.

I love teachers, and I love teaching. For all subjects in K-12, in-person, in-classroom learning is a critical piece of the puzzle. In college, the process is more interactive to begin with.

But people like me have a hell of a time learning at a pace that’s anything close to our potential when we have to sit there in class feeling like we’re spending 90% of our energy not screaming at the top of our lungs, diving through the window, or simply jumping out of our skin. Add social bullshit into that, and there was no chance at all that school would be anything but a nightmare for me.

Technology is not always salvation…but I do believe that in the case of education, for some students like me, it can be, in the long term…if we let it.