Education: December 2005 Archive Page

On the last day of class, I handed out index cards for our last collaborative piece of writing. I told my first year students to write something they learned this semester, in any class or in the residence hall. Then we shuffled the cards together and read them aloud. Here is what one class came up with: --What we learned this semester (Writing as jo(e))

Journalists “are not Emily Dickinson writing poetry on backs of envelopes, not caring whether anybody reads them.”

Given the state of the industry, with newspaper circulations dropping and publications closing, Collinger said that part of the plan is to develop data and “customer driven communications” is integral to making sure the “cobbler’s children have shoes,” he said.

With the rise of blogging and citizen journalism, delivering news the way readers and viewers want is becoming more necessity than luxury, even for major news outlets. The Medill students interviewed seem to recognize that any change in the interest of their business IQ is a good one. --David Epstein --Sign of the Times for J-Schools (Inside Higher Ed)

Because so many deaf children have problems with basic language skills, they get a disproportionate number of exercises related to these "abstract little pieces." And unfortunately, that's exactly what most educational games offer--more of the same thing that's been shown not to work for these people.

So what do I propose? For one thing, I think deaf students, like everyone else, need to write and get responses to work that's relevant to them. That's where blogs come in. --Tom Wright --Literacy, the deaf, and blogs (Kairos News)

Another thought-provoking passage: "[O]nline classes provide environments in which hearing isn't relevant. So do many educational games for children, although some of the preschool-level ones are useless for deaf children, because their directions are in audio. (It always annoyed me that I couldn't help my kids with these.)"

They enjoy learning. For nearly all professors, the chance to review and expand their own youthful education in a variety of fields is a treat that almost transcends the educational needs of their children. Mathematicians, for example, relish the chance to reread the literature they half-missed when they were mastering geometry, and English professors, like me, enjoy the chance to relearn the astronomy they once loved before calculus crushed their hopes for a scientific career. They often see themselves as learning with their children rather than simply teaching them.

They are confident in their ability to teach. Professors often see teaching their own children as part of a continuum of pleasurable obligations to the next generation; they seek to integrate the values of their profession with the values they live at home. Since professors often teach the teachers, they tend to believe -- perhaps with some hubris -- in their ability to teach effectively at all grade levels. But more often, they recognize their limitations and seek collaboration with other parents -- often professors themselves -- with different areas of expertise. --W. A. Pannapacker --For Professors' Children, the Case for Home Schooling (Chronicle)

Pannapacker's list doesn't don't completely overlap with the reasons my wife and I homeschool, but I enjoyed reading it.

Of particular interest to me is the one about how much time is lost shuffling students around during a typical day in what my son calls "the school building":

Without all the crowd control and level seeking, the formal requirements of education can be completed in only a few hours a day, leaving lots of time for self-directed learning and play. As a result, home-schooled children generally learn faster and with less boredom and less justified resentment.

I'm always extremely nervous about wasting time passing out papers or doing other housekeeping during class. Maybe too nervous.

I was surprised to see how prominently Pannapacker mentions bullying. Junior high was difficult for me. I remember horrible Machiavellian power struggles on the bus, where I spent an hour and a half each day, ducking spitballs. Desegregation meant that I was bussed past two junior high schools in more affluent suburbs, to a third school in a less affluent area. I remember a gang of tough girls tried to get me to hit one of them, presumably so they could tell their boyfriends to "protect them" by beating me up.

I remember my first week in Catholic high school, when it felt like I was floating down halls full of kids in crisp button shirts. Once a jock with four or five of his buddies dared me to step outside, but I had just dumped a carton of chocolate milk over his head, so I can understand why he was mad at me. I ended up getting out of the fight by confusing him.

Him: Why'd you throw chocolate milk at me?

Me: I wasn't aiming my chocolate milk at you, I was aiming at this total jerk who's been throwing food at me for three days in a row. He's really stupid and cowardly, since he only picks on me when he's with a group of his friends. You should go pick a fight with him -- he'd probably be a lot more challenging to pick on than a wiry, pasty-skinned loner who'd really rather prefer to study for his Latin test. But thanks for the suggestion that I'm a severe threat to your social status, such that you are forced to retaliate with violence.

Him: Why'd you throw chocolate milk at me?

Me: Were there some words in there that you couldn't understand?

Lunchroom Crowd: Ha ha!

Him (blinking): Why'd you throw chocolate milk at me?

(I got that survival tactic from "I, Mudd," a classic Star Trek episode in which Captain Kirk confused a planet full of androids by flooding them with illogic.)

In a larger university context, I can’t be open and honest, I fear, because of my lack of tenure, lack of position, lack of a terminal degree. I’m reminded often that only those with tenure have the freedom to “take risks” with students because with tenure, one has some protection if the risks don’t work out. Yet I’m working with students who have great needs and who present great risks. But there is no protection for me if the risks don’t work out.

[...]

They resisted the work, resisted me, and resisted the system that had them in such a foreign place. They resisted and behaved badly because they were afraid of failure, because they had so many other pressures placed on them, and because by behaving badly, they could gain a little respect from their peers by not appearing “stupid.” Yet we all knew what was going on…. we all knew about the resistance and the face-saving. The students and myself, we all knew. And we all knew that many times they just played me. They sometimes played me because they are in a system where everyone is played in some manner because someone has to win and someone loses. That’s just the way it is. They put on a face that allowed them to survive a difficult and foreign system and that face was one of belligerence and defiance. But I wore a face, too. My face was one of the educated, of the elite. They would never see themselves in my face because they couldn’t see through the mask.

Look how we all lost.

How could I expect them to remove their masks if I didn’t remove mine? Removing my mask would have been to tell my story (or part of it), to be real to them, to be a little vulnerable. Yet I couldn’t. I feared. I failed. I failed them. --Rubicon --Basic Writers and the Academy (Pass the Rubicon)

What’s the magic formula? How do I take the “good” and catch it in a bottle, and let it out when I need to ward off the “bad”? Sometimes I feel like Willy Loman pleading with the image of his fantastically successful brother – What’s the secret?

Of course, there is no "right answer," but I'm pursuing this line of thought because in myself I can see elements of that first-semester freshman sitting in a classroom, furious and terrified, alienated from a discussion everyone else seems to understand, silently pleading that the professor would stop talking about concepts and rules and theories, and just write on the board the answers to the questions that will be on the final exam.

Welcome to the Rhetoric and Composition Wiki Book. This wikitext is designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs. We are writing this free wikitext because we believe that while commercial textbook publishers offer excellent products, many of our students are unable to afford them. We would also like to make our knowledge available to anyone with the desire and ambition to learn rather than those few privileged enough to attend a university. Finally, we hope that readers like you will not only benefit from our work, but also contribute to its ongoing development. --Rhetoric and Composition (Wikibooks)

A wiki is a collection of user-editable web document. If you think you can explain something better, you can change it.

Several of my freshmen seemed surprised when they learned that Wikipedia -- the most famous of all wikis -- is user-editable, and that anyone in the world can work on it. Wikipedia has a devoted community of amateur fact-checkers, so that any deliberate vandalism is quickly spotted and reversed. I tell my students that Wikipedia is an acceptable resource for an informal in-class oral presentation, or if they want to consult it to inform their written responses to assigned readings.

For cutting-edge topics that involve online culture, or that require the sorting out of huge amounts of information (such as ongoing coverage of natural disasters), Wikipedia is an excellent source. If the article has been edited recently, and has been edited numerous times, its probably a fairly good representation of the common understanding of a topic. From time to time I find inaccuracies and omissions, but I try to fix them.