Ms. Ksra of “You Learn Something New (Almost) Everyday” chose a challenging word for this week’s Saturday Scavenger Shots. I had to think all week about how I could represent this word, but not before i had to look it up online to find out the definition. Finally, I remembered something that happened in college. So here we go:
First the definition:
sci·o·lism (sī’ə-lĭz’əm) Pronunciation Key
n. A pretentious attitude of scholarship; superficial knowledgeability.
During my senior year of college, I took a beginner’s class in American Sign Language. Our professor was deaf, so not only did we need to learn to sign for the class, it was also to communicate more effectively with our professor. He could read lips and he had a hearing aid, so he could still communicate with us.
Anyway, half way into the quarter, somebody supposedly from our class who had a “pretentious attitude of scholarship”, took it upon themselves to sign for any hearing impaired audience members during some seminar. If my hunch is correct, I think that was a case of sciolism. I never found out who that person was, but our professor found out what happened and was angry (because the person wasn’t very accurate with their signing to begin with) so he lectured our whole class.
So that’s my take on the word. Ksra would tag someone for the next word, but she is vacationing and won’t be back till next week. She has asked that I tag the next person.
The next person will be…..NoRegrets from “Woman with No Regrets“!
Posted by AlienCG on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 2:28 pm
That would definitely be a case of Sciolism. I went to school with a guy who took a half a quarter and thought he was smarter than everyone else. He ended up getting terribly embarrassed by the teacher and eventually dropping out. Good picture and story.
Posted by churlita on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 8:16 pm
I live in a college town, so you can’t throw a rock without hitting an example of that. I’m just not sure how to represent that with a photo.
Posted by laura b. on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 1:53 am
That is a truly excellent example! And thanks for being the designated tagger :-)
Posted by eroswings on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Oh, I can’t stand wannabe geniuses like that! That’s so cool you took sign language courses. I need to take some sign language courses; the few hand signs I use aren’t necessarily used in polite company ;)
Posted by NoRegrets on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Yours was really excellent. Much better than mine. And what arrogance they displayed! Wow.
Posted by k_sra on Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 8:05 am
Thank you, Tara, for helping maintain the Scavenger presence in my absence. :) Love the picture and the story. This week’s word was harder than I anticipated! But you seemed to sail right through. Nicely done! : )