Spurious

First published in Column 8 on the 18^th November, 1992

What little I know about the logical use of words has been somewhat casually acquired over the years through books like Straight and Crooked Thinking. The need to step cautiously through the minefields of words is a lesson more could learn.

For instance, some of the arguments against the reintroduction of corporal punishment have a kind of spurious logic. (Spurious – false, not genuine – is a word I learnt many years ago under the tutelage of one W S Gilbert; he introduced umpteen words into my vocabular. I didn’t always know what they meant at that time, but I used them anyway.)

Because corporal punishment is violent in the eyes of some people they claim that re-introducing it would increase violence in our society. Just a minute. The enormous increase in violence has come in the period since corporal punishment was removed from our schools. Our society was actually less murderous and less aggressive when corporal punishment was the norm.

It doesn’t follow that c.p. had anything to do with keeping violence under control, but neither does it follow that re-introduction would increase violence. Spurious logic.

We’re often victims of similar logic. In fact, the whole school of thought that says things are now better because we have less censorship, less restrictive laws and much greater freedom of expression uses such spurious logic continually.

Look at many of the arguments in favour of sex education. The theory goes that in the past people never knew enough, and therefore they got themselves into all sorts of spots (and in some cases came out in all sorts of spots).

To compensate, sex education has been given free rein in our society. Both those who (probably) sincere educators, and those who are sexual exploiters, express themselves freely. How is it then that sex education is so ineffective now we’ve had so much more of it? The results of two or three decades of sex education aren’t stable marriages, less adultery, less promiscuity and a decrease in venereal diseases. Quite the opposite. Why do the educators continue to insist that more knowledge means fewer problems? Spurious logic of the moral sort.

Finally, we have a prime case of spurious logic on the part of that innovative gentleman, Mr William Birch. (Actually if anyone should be in favour of re-introducing corporal punishment, it should be him.)

Mr Birch last week proclaimed to any Australian who would listen, that the Employment Contracts Act is working. He 74% of employees are satisfied with it; they have increases in wages; strikes and stoppages have decreased dramatically.

Spurious logic of the parliamentary kind.

A closer look at Mr Birch’s own quoted figures show only 42% of people had increases. And naturally strikes and stoppages have decreased. In a society where there is now little or no protection for many workers, no one can afford to go on strike anymore. If they do, hundreds of others will be willing to do the job for less.

Furthermore, Mr Birch failed to mention one small fact to the Aussies: so many people are out of work, any wage figure looks good.

How ironic that two newspaper reports below the one on Mr Birch tell us first that over a 1,000 cases await decisions from the Employment Tribunal, and second that Auckland bus workers have agreed to average weekly pay cut of $100.

 

The Employment Contracts Act didn’t work and lasted barely a decade. Whether it’s replacement – the Employment Relations Act 2000 – was, or is, any better is a moot point.

The removal of Corporal Punishment from schools eventually led to it being illegal to physically punish one’s own children. And of course, sex education (so-called), has devolved into a myriad other areas relating to sex and gender and become a knot round the world’s neck.