June 2010
1 post
Composition, markets, and a random summer thought →
One of the more interesting points Christopher Newfield makes in his Unmaking the Public University is that academia as a whole has allowed itself to be controlled by the market place without…
March 2010
2 posts
Boys, Girls, and Experience in the Classroom →
Just like 4th grade, every semester I split the class up into boys and girls and put them into different rooms. Their task in these homogeneous groups is to list “how might we describe men and…
Boys and Girls
Just like 4th grade, every semester I split the class up into boys and girls and put them into different rooms. Their task in these homogeneous groups is to list “how might we describe men and women in the classroom.” Before they head off into different areas, I tell them that what we are after are the “common assumptions” one might make about someone else based on their...
February 2010
7 posts
Rebellious youth?
The one constant practice I’ve had since I started teaching college level classes in the fall of 2004 was to ask two questions of students: how do we understand how a classroom works and how do we think they should work? Or, more simply, describe the reality of classrooms and the ideal classroom.
This practice started, for me, in a moment of crisis during my first semester as an...
“The question is too dramatic, too flattering. As Iago, most writing program...”
– James Sledd, 1990
“Composition courses should be eliminated, not improved: eliminated, because they...”
– Louis Kampf, Address to CCCC, 1970
“Feminist researchers concur, arguing that critical researchers need to...”
– Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner, 1998 (CE)
“This kind of control, this kind of juice among America’s purveyors of...”
– Kermit E Campbell, CCC 2007
“Fish’s “pragmatism” is not the philosophy of Emerson or...”
– Kurt Spellmeyer, JAC 1995
“The basics to which we are exhorted to go back are often no more than the...”
– James Sledd (JAC, 1982)
October 2009
1 post
Nailing THE question right on the head. →
Oh how things seem to always come back. A report issued in 1906 detailed how many young men were caught in dead end industrial jobs and unable to advance because they lacked specific skills….
September 2009
4 posts
Disembodied Discourse and the Failure of Internet... →
Disclaimer: I rarely if ever post things to this blog in “rough” form, but I’ve been stewing over this for a few weeks now and finally want to eject it out into the world. If anyone out there in…
Beware of the theorist who advocates a position of eliminating difference and social conflict from the realm of human affairs.
L. Mumford: John Dewey’s prose affords the reader an experience “as depressing as a subway ride.” I would say that is not untrue..sadly!
Looking at pictures of CA wildfires reminds me of time before grad school when I considered joining forest firefighter crews.
August 2009
22 posts
Unexpected discovery re-reading S.B. Heath’s Ways w/Words: rabid abstinence education & fear of sex may have roots in white class conflict.
Oh wow, this bible thing is great! Something Sarah Palin might want to follow more closely. http://bit.ly/RYf4H
Lieberman lost his house seat in 1980...
Interestingly, that was the same election cycle in which Ted Kennedy said this:
“Finally, we cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for a national health insurance.
We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on...
“The hypocrisy of objectivity, of apoliticism, of the innocence of study, is much...”
– Daniel Cohn-Bendt, leader in 1968 student revolt in Paris.
Disembodied Discourse and the Failure of Internet... →
Disclaimer: I rarely if ever post things to this blog in “rough” form, but I’ve been stewing over this for a few weeks now and finally want to eject it out into the world. If anyone out there in…
I’ll keep saying it: Failure of health care reform is result of the many things which all point to failure of education in past 50 years.
While reading Berlin, I suddenly realized I couldn’t care less about the project of reformulating “English” or “Rhetoric.”
Why take teaching seriously? So when asked what our hopes and desires are, we can point to the class and say “this is what I have in mind.”
We cannot teach democracy directly; we can only approach it via pedagogy and love.
Deterioration in the goals and methods of education over past 30 years = chickens coming home to roost in uncivil town hall debates.
“The fallacy in these versions of the same ideas is perhaps the most pervasive of...”
– John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology (1922)
Reflective thoughts...
Last night I discovered some of my own documents (syllabus, assignment descriptions), lifted word for word on the page of another instructor who I have never met before. Even though all the words were there verbatim (copy and pasted), this person never contacted me nor attributed any of this to me. In essence, it was presented in such a fashion that it made it seem like this person came up with...
Just got compared to John Keating (Dead Poet’s Society). Hm. Not sure how I feel about that. Keating got fired and a student died.
As Camus might say, «J’avais laissé ma fenêtre ouverte et c’était bon de sentir la nuit d’été couler sur nos corps bruns.»
(note to obnoxiously loud female near me) Why doesn’t everyone study abroad? Not everyone has a rich daddy to pay for it you stuck up brat.
nothing breaks my heart more than to see students argue that their job is to simply do as they’re told in classes and to never question it.
For whatever reason, Paul Valéry is on my mind this stormy night. http://bit.ly/14I2fV
Thoughts to think about at the end of one semester... →
Our civilization is taking on the structure and properties of a machine…This machine will not tolerate less than world-wide rule; it will not allow a single human being to survive outside its…
Reads through a portfolio that comes with its own soundtrack, recorded by student. Again, my students > yours.
A reminder that often what we yearn for in having “good students” is different in the lives of students themselves http://twitpic.com/d0hdk
My questions at the end of a semester: http://twitpic.com/cxwaw
While shredding old documents I came across my agenda for my very first day as an instructor: “Step one - many deep breaths.” Classic.
July 2009
7 posts
I find it both amusing and annoying that a throw away piece I wrote 3 years ago is still the most read piece on my blog http://bit.ly/M5usj
Notes on the search for the student text →
1. The commonly held belief among many instructors of writing at the post-secondary level is that the texts produced by students in classrooms are primarily a product of an individual, autonomous…
Am I old enough to start quoting myself? The health care debacle going on reminds me that nearly a year ago I wrote the following: “A vision of social, cultural, economic and political problems as educational problems. As it is now, the problems we face are seen as separate, isolated, disciplinary problems to be solved by specialists in various areas. This model of informational growth is...
Poor Professor Higgins Indeed →
(A few thoughts on assessment inspired by Henry Higgins) In it’s best formulation, “assessment” represents a genre of communication. It communicates the effects of pedagogic practice to interested…
Just reading news journalism titles reveals truism: police > black person, even if said black person is President. Example? AP story: “Obama remark on black scholar’s arrest angers cops” NOT “Black scholar’s arrest by cop angers Obama”
After months of searching and waiting, I have finally tracked down my own copy of Valerie Walkerdine’s _Schoolgirl Fictions_, one of my favorite books ever. Happy to share PDFs with anyone since the book is currently out of print and very hard to find.
“It is said, and said truly, that for the world’s peace it is necessary...”
– John Dewey