Our priests and presidents, our surgeons and lawyers, our educators and newscasters need worry less about satisfying the demands of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship.
Interpretation
Professionals should prioritize engaging communication over strict adherence to their fields' conventions.
In this quote, Neil Postman emphasizes the importance of effective communication and captivating presentation in various professions, suggesting that practitioners should place greater value on their ability to 'perform' and engage their audience rather than merely fulfilling the technical requirements of their roles. By doing so, they can better connect with people and communicate their messages more effectively, ultimately fostering a more informed and engaged society.
In practice
During a conference, a speaker could use this quote to highlight the importance of engaging storytelling.
Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself.
Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.
A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. […] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?
My hope was that organizations would start including this range of skills in their training programs - in other words, offer an adult education in social and emotional intelligence.
Tuesday—we had school for the first time. Madame O’Malley had a moment of silence at the beginning of French class, a class that was always punctuated with long moments of silence, and then asked us how we were feeling. “Awful,” a girl said. “En français,” Madame O’Malley replied. “En français.
One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.
My message was 'Think African. Make schools read African history.'
I think the success of any school can be measured by the contribution the alumni make to our national life.
Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.
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