Is there really much of a difference? Blah blah blah teach and change a kid's life blah blah blah.
A student only learns two useful things in college. 1. How to take 'no' for an answer because the professor is right and you're wrong. 2. How to fill out paperwork on time.
Just remember...those that can, do. Those that can't, teach.
There are certainly bad teachers. I've had a few myself. But there are also plenty of bad students -- unmotivated, wanting nothing more than to be stamped "approved" so that they can be passed on to the next step. For them, education is just an annoyance they have to cope with so they can get a degree so they can get a job so they buy that big house with the swimming pool and his-and-her SUVs in the two-car garage.
I've had great teachers who loved discuss things and who wouldn't slap anyone down just for disagreeing with them, and who care about much more than on-time paperwork.
But don?t worry? if all you care about is being ?processed?, you can likely squeak by with Cs and Ds, maybe even the occasional B. If fact, you can spend most of your free time partying, and still go on to be President some day.
I think it's a stupid idea, personally. I think the students will hate you for it, and it will give them no benefit whatsoever in their life. Just do your job and process them through.
i really hope you're kidding.
all in all, it's a tough call. the kids who do a great job with such guidelines would have probably done a great job regardless of guidelines (with a few exceptions... some who saw it as a new challenge, others who saw it as an insult to their time).
personally, i wish people cared more about english. i may be a print/web designer, but i write the absolute BEST cover and sales letters ever. i've also entertained the AI community nearly 2000 times and counting!
p.s. i do want to point out that i won a nice $500 scholarship in 1992 for answering a topic question in exactly 75 words, thoughtfully and grammatically correct.
HOM, as a person married to an english teacher in her first year of teaching, i can tell you it is a VERY unforgiving environment, and she's a professor. i can only imagine how much less rewarding a high school day of teaching can be. i mean, she comes home, telling me how half of her classes are plagiarizing, none of them read ANYthing she assigns, yet they all get mad when they don't get A's (especially the ones who were used to A's in high school... likely because they had teachers who just "did their jobs and processed them through."). sometimes, she does more social work in a week than her social worker sister.
I am not kidding, and I am attending college at the moment (majoring in criminal justice, minoring in political science). Yes, I have already taken college level Intro English (101 and 102). No, it is not a sad commentary. I'm sorry you can't accept the truth. And, quite frankly and honestly, I think you are the sad one.
There are certainly bad teachers. I've had a few myself. But there are also plenty of bad students -- unmotivated, wanting nothing more than to be stamped "approved" so that they can be passed on to the next step. For them, education is just an annoyance they have to cope with so they can get a degree so they can get a job so they buy that big house with the swimming pool and his-and-her SUVs in the two-car garage.
Agreed.
Quote:
I've had great teachers who loved discuss things and who wouldn't slap anyone down just for disagreeing with them, and who care about much more than on-time paperwork.
You were lucky I had maybe one or two that actually cared about discussion or actual learning. Almost all of them were just interested in having their egos padded by hearing a group of 20 somethings regurgitate their own work or ideas.
Quote:
But don?t worry? if all you care about is being ?processed?, you can likely squeak by with Cs and Ds, maybe even the occasional B. If fact, you can spend most of your free time partying, and still go on to be President some day.
Agreed.
But for some of us that are not willing to accept what a professor said at face value life isn't so easy. Perfect example, I was taking a film class and the mid term came up. The professor had taken the entire class before to "review" and made a point of saying that there were "no wrong answers" as long as you provided examples from the film to back it up. Well, I completely disagreed with the professor's assessment of the films and wrote essays to that extent. I made sure to have examples for all the points I made. I got a F. The professor also included a copy of what an A essay looked like so we could have a point of reference. To my surprise, the A essays were almost verbatim the notes we had taken in class. There were no text books for this class but "the happy few" showed up time and time again in the A essay. This was the professors description of the characters in a movie we had watched.
After that class I learned my lesson. I became the model student and stopped thinking for myself. I just reworded the notes from class and argued the professor's position and lo and behold my grades shot right up.
HOM, as a person married to an english teacher in her first year of teaching, i can tell you it is a VERY unforgiving environment, and she's a professor. i can only imagine how much less rewarding a high school day of teaching can be. i mean, she comes home, telling me how half of her classes are plagiarizing, none of them read ANYthing she assigns, yet they all get mad when they don't get A's (especially the ones who were used to A's in high school... likely because they had teachers who just "did their jobs and processed them through."). sometimes, she does more social work in a week than her social worker sister.
I don't doubt that at all. I would never want to be a professor seeing how my classmates acted and prepared for class. I also wouldn't argue that students are blameless. Students are just as responsible for it as professors are. I think the biggest problem is Academia in general. The idea of "publish or perish" is just sickening. The idea that a letter grade can accurately reflect a person's abilities is just as sickening. The entire system of Academia is worthless and needs to be junked.
I?m considering engaging in a little teacherly fun this semester. For a long time now, I?ve been using strange tactics to get students to become aware of how they have to make choices when they write--whether or not they are conscious of these choices. So here?s what I?m considering: 137 words.
Anyone care to respond? Using exactly 137 words?
Cheers,
Scott
Let me suggest something that has helped me. Eric Hoffer (the True Believer)only wrote in long-hand. He had his students write a short essay, then rewrite it again (and sometimes again)requireing fewer words but containing the same information.
I am not kidding, and I am attending college at the moment (majoring in criminal justice, minoring in political science). Yes, I have already taken college level Intro English (101 and 102). No, it is not a sad commentary. I'm sorry you can't accept the truth. And, quite frankly and honestly, I think you are the sad one.
yep, the truth appears to be that you want people to "do their job" and "process YOU through" to your major in criminal justice and minor in poli sci.
and that, kids, is what is wrong with our academic AND judicial system...
One hundred and thirty seven words? That's a lot of words, you know. Just kidding. I know that being a teacher is a hard job. My father is one. Teaches from fifth to sixth grade. Sometimes it's pretty tough. He even had to move to another city, just to avoid all the dumb and ignorant parents who couldn't understand that their child wasn't up to the stuff my father taught them. Children can be hard sometimes. That's why they have to be taught.
I think that this is a very clever assignment for your pupils. I don't think they're going to hate you for that. If you're going to be a grammar nazi, well then maybe, but like Kickaha said it, you have to make assignments where they can compete. I think yours is one of them.
Midwinter, it sounds like you've devised an interesting prospect, and if you constructed it right the students would get a meaningful lesson in critical thinking, creativity, and story development. (29) It is my belief 137 words is a good number to begin with. 1000 might be a bit excessive for starters, but you could work up to that in another assignment subsequent to the original. (64) I must enquire why you chose 137 as the magic number for your experiment. I have no quarrels with it, but surely there is a reason why you chose THAT number. (95) One rule that I personally would establish with such an assignment is to require that the last two sentences each have at least 5 words. A rule like that would discourage them from doing something like the following. Sound reasonable to you? (137)
Such assignments seem like exercises in futility. Students who actually care about expressing themselves clearly and concisely (assuming that we are talking about high school and college students) are usually capable of doing so without that level of guidance. The rest, meanwhile, aren't really going to derive any benefit from the assignments. As soon as they are out from under your thumb, they will slip back into their old habits and forget that anyone attempted to help them improve their skills.
"Hate" is perhaps too strong a word, but advanced students are certainly going to resent assignments like yours. Why shouldn't they? After all, they would receive no benefit, and the students with the most potential to learn from the experience could care less.
They often do to people who would suggest that they need to be shuffled on through the system. But then, it seems all assignments seem like exercises in futility to such students, who, year after year, go through a miserable experience in school. I see these kids every semester: some have issues with authority, some have inappropriate notions of entitlement, some have inflated egos, and some just plain don't know why they're in college, and therefore resent the entire process. It's quite sad, really, to watch someone spend that much time to go through the motions and then, in the end, take almost nothing from the experience. But then, you get out of your education what you put into it.
Quote:
Students who actually care about expressing themselves clearly and concisely (assuming that we are talking about high school and college students) are usually capable of doing so without that level of guidance.
No. They aren't. The problem is that sometimes many of them think they can. What they seldom seem to realize is that if they were as smart or articulate (or as entitled) as they believe themselves to be, they wouldn't have to take courses like introductory writing/freshman composition. I didn't have to.
Quote:
The rest, meanwhile, aren't really going to derive any benefit from the assignments.
"The rest," it seems, would derive little benefit from any instruction whatsoever.
Quote:
As soon as they are out from under your thumb, they will slip back into their old habits and forget that anyone attempted to help them improve their skills.
This is very probably the only thing you've said that I agree with. It's a wonder we even bother with trying to educate folks given this line of thinking.
Quote:
"Hate" is perhaps too strong a word, but advanced students are certainly going to resent assignments like yours.
Considering this assignment would have little or no pedagogical worth to an upper-division course (unless it were a creative writing class), I would never assign it to "advanced students." And besides, truly advanced students wouldn't be taking lower-division courses like this anyway.
Quote:
Why shouldn't they? After all, they would receive no benefit, and the students with the most potential to learn from the experience could care less.
Mighty fine supposition there; you claim to speak for all weak students as well as all advanced students!
Howsabout this. Let me give you a scenario:
Your job is to teach students of various ranges of experience (although all need instruction) how to write clear, precise prose. Your class, on the whole, contains students who write bad sentences with poor verb choices, imprecise nouns, useless adjectives and adverbs. Even worse, they do not know that their writing is as bad as it actually is. It is abundantly clear to you that they're sitting down, typing, and then printing out whatever flows from their brain, and that they believe "revision" is the fixing of commas and typos. You want to get the to realize that whether or not they are conscious of it, they actually make choices about what words to put on the page, and, in turn, you want to force them to make better choices.
So what do you suggest, since you seem to want to speak for all students of all ranges everywhere? A worksheet? A grammar quiz? Copying out the essays of Emerson by hand (which is how they used to teach this kind of thing)? A long series of lectures on clarity and grace in prose writing? A book on the subject?
I'm serious. I get what seems to be a student like you about once every couple or three years. So tell me, since you don't like what you're getting, what on earth is it that you actually want?
You give me a good idea and I'll use it next time it'll be handy.
Comments
Originally posted by HOM
Is there really much of a difference? Blah blah blah teach and change a kid's life blah blah blah.
A student only learns two useful things in college. 1. How to take 'no' for an answer because the professor is right and you're wrong. 2. How to fill out paperwork on time.
Just remember...those that can, do. Those that can't, teach.
There are certainly bad teachers. I've had a few myself. But there are also plenty of bad students -- unmotivated, wanting nothing more than to be stamped "approved" so that they can be passed on to the next step. For them, education is just an annoyance they have to cope with so they can get a degree so they can get a job so they buy that big house with the swimming pool and his-and-her SUVs in the two-car garage.
I've had great teachers who loved discuss things and who wouldn't slap anyone down just for disagreeing with them, and who care about much more than on-time paperwork.
But don?t worry? if all you care about is being ?processed?, you can likely squeak by with Cs and Ds, maybe even the occasional B. If fact, you can spend most of your free time partying, and still go on to be President some day.
Originally posted by Ganondorf
I think it's a stupid idea, personally. I think the students will hate you for it, and it will give them no benefit whatsoever in their life. Just do your job and process them through.
i really hope you're kidding.
all in all, it's a tough call. the kids who do a great job with such guidelines would have probably done a great job regardless of guidelines (with a few exceptions... some who saw it as a new challenge, others who saw it as an insult to their time).
personally, i wish people cared more about english. i may be a print/web designer, but i write the absolute BEST cover and sales letters ever. i've also entertained the AI community nearly 2000 times and counting!
p.s. i do want to point out that i won a nice $500 scholarship in 1992 for answering a topic question in exactly 75 words, thoughtfully and grammatically correct.
Originally posted by shetline
There are certainly bad teachers. I've had a few myself. But there are also plenty of bad students -- unmotivated, wanting nothing more than to be stamped "approved" so that they can be passed on to the next step. For them, education is just an annoyance they have to cope with so they can get a degree so they can get a job so they buy that big house with the swimming pool and his-and-her SUVs in the two-car garage.
Agreed.
I've had great teachers who loved discuss things and who wouldn't slap anyone down just for disagreeing with them, and who care about much more than on-time paperwork.
You were lucky I had maybe one or two that actually cared about discussion or actual learning. Almost all of them were just interested in having their egos padded by hearing a group of 20 somethings regurgitate their own work or ideas.
But don?t worry? if all you care about is being ?processed?, you can likely squeak by with Cs and Ds, maybe even the occasional B. If fact, you can spend most of your free time partying, and still go on to be President some day.
Agreed.
But for some of us that are not willing to accept what a professor said at face value life isn't so easy. Perfect example, I was taking a film class and the mid term came up. The professor had taken the entire class before to "review" and made a point of saying that there were "no wrong answers" as long as you provided examples from the film to back it up. Well, I completely disagreed with the professor's assessment of the films and wrote essays to that extent. I made sure to have examples for all the points I made. I got a F. The professor also included a copy of what an A essay looked like so we could have a point of reference. To my surprise, the A essays were almost verbatim the notes we had taken in class. There were no text books for this class but "the happy few" showed up time and time again in the A essay. This was the professors description of the characters in a movie we had watched.
After that class I learned my lesson. I became the model student and stopped thinking for myself. I just reworded the notes from class and argued the professor's position and lo and behold my grades shot right up.
Originally posted by rok
HOM, as a person married to an english teacher in her first year of teaching, i can tell you it is a VERY unforgiving environment, and she's a professor. i can only imagine how much less rewarding a high school day of teaching can be. i mean, she comes home, telling me how half of her classes are plagiarizing, none of them read ANYthing she assigns, yet they all get mad when they don't get A's (especially the ones who were used to A's in high school... likely because they had teachers who just "did their jobs and processed them through."). sometimes, she does more social work in a week than her social worker sister.
I don't doubt that at all. I would never want to be a professor seeing how my classmates acted and prepared for class. I also wouldn't argue that students are blameless. Students are just as responsible for it as professors are. I think the biggest problem is Academia in general. The idea of "publish or perish" is just sickening. The idea that a letter grade can accurately reflect a person's abilities is just as sickening. The entire system of Academia is worthless and needs to be junked.
Originally posted by midwinter
I?m considering engaging in a little teacherly fun this semester. For a long time now, I?ve been using strange tactics to get students to become aware of how they have to make choices when they write--whether or not they are conscious of these choices. So here?s what I?m considering: 137 words.
Anyone care to respond? Using exactly 137 words?
Cheers,
Scott
Let me suggest something that has helped me. Eric Hoffer (the True Believer)only wrote in long-hand. He had his students write a short essay, then rewrite it again (and sometimes again)requireing fewer words but containing the same information.
For important writing I use this - and it works.
Originally posted by Ganondorf
I am not kidding, and I am attending college at the moment (majoring in criminal justice, minoring in political science). Yes, I have already taken college level Intro English (101 and 102). No, it is not a sad commentary. I'm sorry you can't accept the truth. And, quite frankly and honestly, I think you are the sad one.
yep, the truth appears to be that you want people to "do their job" and "process YOU through" to your major in criminal justice and minor in poli sci.
and that, kids, is what is wrong with our academic AND judicial system...
I think that this is a very clever assignment for your pupils. I don't think they're going to hate you for that. If you're going to be a grammar nazi, well then maybe, but like Kickaha said it, you have to make assignments where they can compete. I think yours is one of them.
okay, ganondorf. you've just earned a trip to a little place i like to call "rok's ignore list."
I understand. It is in your nature.
Originally posted by rok
and that, kids, is what is wrong with our academic AND judicial system...
That's what's commonly referred to as the "consumer-based model of education." You don't get a diploma at the end; you get a receipt.
Cheers
Scott
(MS Office 'Live Meeting' just popped up on my AI/Apple iBook Screen?)
Remember the guy who invented fire: he was burned at the stake.
Aries 1B
"Hate" is perhaps too strong a word, but advanced students are certainly going to resent assignments like yours. Why shouldn't they? After all, they would receive no benefit, and the students with the most potential to learn from the experience could care less.
Originally posted by Dreadnought
Such assignments seem like exercises in futility.
They often do to people who would suggest that they need to be shuffled on through the system. But then, it seems all assignments seem like exercises in futility to such students, who, year after year, go through a miserable experience in school. I see these kids every semester: some have issues with authority, some have inappropriate notions of entitlement, some have inflated egos, and some just plain don't know why they're in college, and therefore resent the entire process. It's quite sad, really, to watch someone spend that much time to go through the motions and then, in the end, take almost nothing from the experience. But then, you get out of your education what you put into it.
Students who actually care about expressing themselves clearly and concisely (assuming that we are talking about high school and college students) are usually capable of doing so without that level of guidance.
No. They aren't. The problem is that sometimes many of them think they can. What they seldom seem to realize is that if they were as smart or articulate (or as entitled) as they believe themselves to be, they wouldn't have to take courses like introductory writing/freshman composition. I didn't have to.
The rest, meanwhile, aren't really going to derive any benefit from the assignments.
"The rest," it seems, would derive little benefit from any instruction whatsoever.
As soon as they are out from under your thumb, they will slip back into their old habits and forget that anyone attempted to help them improve their skills.
This is very probably the only thing you've said that I agree with. It's a wonder we even bother with trying to educate folks given this line of thinking.
"Hate" is perhaps too strong a word, but advanced students are certainly going to resent assignments like yours.
Considering this assignment would have little or no pedagogical worth to an upper-division course (unless it were a creative writing class), I would never assign it to "advanced students." And besides, truly advanced students wouldn't be taking lower-division courses like this anyway.
Why shouldn't they? After all, they would receive no benefit, and the students with the most potential to learn from the experience could care less.
Mighty fine supposition there; you claim to speak for all weak students as well as all advanced students!
Howsabout this. Let me give you a scenario:
Your job is to teach students of various ranges of experience (although all need instruction) how to write clear, precise prose. Your class, on the whole, contains students who write bad sentences with poor verb choices, imprecise nouns, useless adjectives and adverbs. Even worse, they do not know that their writing is as bad as it actually is. It is abundantly clear to you that they're sitting down, typing, and then printing out whatever flows from their brain, and that they believe "revision" is the fixing of commas and typos. You want to get the to realize that whether or not they are conscious of it, they actually make choices about what words to put on the page, and, in turn, you want to force them to make better choices.
So what do you suggest, since you seem to want to speak for all students of all ranges everywhere? A worksheet? A grammar quiz? Copying out the essays of Emerson by hand (which is how they used to teach this kind of thing)? A long series of lectures on clarity and grace in prose writing? A book on the subject?
I'm serious. I get what seems to be a student like you about once every couple or three years. So tell me, since you don't like what you're getting, what on earth is it that you actually want?
You give me a good idea and I'll use it next time it'll be handy.
Cheers
Scott
Cheers
Scott